BCMS is creating Pennsylvania's first adaptive sailing program for physically challenged individuals and we are building boats with National Honor Society students. To date, we have provided over two thousand area young people with unique, engaging and educational maritime programming. The BCMS boat building experience provides educators and administrators with a perfect, cross-curricular, experiential unit. Building the Six-Hour Canoe challenges participants to utilize algebra to determine the fit of various parts of the boat. Participants are constantly working with fractions and interpreting scale drawings to create full size patterns.
Students also become familiar with the utility of numerous hull shapes and discuss various designs.
Specially designed boats will enable participants with a wide range of mobility issues to sail on their own. Sailing is one of the only sports where a physically challenged individual can compete equally with an able bodied competitor. BCMS plans to attract and to host regattas designed expressly for physically challenged sailors. THE ERIE BOAT BCMS is working with Buffalo State College's Center for Watercraft Studies to build the Erie Boat . This twenty-eight foot, two masted wooden boat was the indigenous fishing boat along Lake Erie's southern shore in the mid to late nineteenth century.