WILMINGTON — Wooden boats and fiberglass boats will be on display this weekend at Cape Fear Community College’s 18th Annual Boat Show.
The free boat show will include a live boat building demonstration, knot tying competition, and plenty of boats on the Wilmington riverfront from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. this Saturday.
The event show cases the art of boat building while raising scholarship money for students in Cape Fear Community College’s (CFCC) boat building programs.
All proceeds from the event go directly into the scholarship fund. Last year, the boat show raised more than $1,800 for the scholarship fund, according to the college’s Marine Technology Department Chair Jason Rogers.
Catch a variety of boats, both wooden and fiber glass, displayed along the riverfront and in the water. More than 20 boats are registered for the event, including power boats, sail boats and canoes, Rogers said. CFCC’s building classes will offer up six of their own boats for display, each boat in various stages of completion.
The program’s boat building shops will be also be open to visitors and faculty will be on hand to talk about the programs and boat building in general.
CFCC’s students will conduct a live boat building demonstration, in preparation for the students take part in a boat building competition in Beaufort this May, Rogers said. Students will be working to build a 8-to 10-foot row boat, the same boat they have to complete with in four hours during the competition.
“Our students are doing a dry run of building the boats so … they’re ready to go,” Rogers said.
The event will have several vendors, including the U.S. Coast Guard Sail and Power Squadron, as well as food trucks and a nautical knot tying challenge. You may even catch one of the Marine Technology students, a knot-tying champion who, broke the Georgetown Boat Show record. The challenge includes six nautical knots.
“It’s going to be a big day,” said Rogers.
CFCC’s boat building school offers two programs — boat service and manufacturing, and wooden boat building — designed to teach students the fundamentals to work in the boat building and repair industry.
The boat show will take place at Cape Feat Community College’s Wilmington Campus at the riverfront on Water Street, between Hilton Wilmington Riverside and Coastline Convention Center. There is free parking for the event at the CFCC Parking Deck on Nutt Street. For more information, visit the Marine Technology Program’s website.
