United Way kicks off fundraising campaign

The two-man crew aboard the cardboard rig dubbed "Hope We Float Today" got a few yards from shore when they dumped out into Aurora's Mastodon Lake in Phillips Park.

Valiantly, the crew representing an organization called Hope for Tomorrow scrambled back into their homemade vessel and continued racing against three competitors at Saturday's What Floats Your Cardboard Boat Race, an event presented by the Fox Valley United Way as a kickoff to this year's fundraising campaign. Organization leaders said United Way is hoping to reach a fundraising goal of $1.5 million, money that will help in the organization's support of several local charities.

For a while, the troubled boat actually started to catch up to the three boats built and manned by staff and residents of Hesed House, an Aurora homeless shelter.

But, in the end, they were no match for "Hesed 3," a boat decorated to look like a wedding cake and manned by Hesed executive director Ryan Dowd, dressed in a wedding gown for the occasion, his son, Cameron, and boat captain Jason Holmes, Hesed's program director of the overnight emergency shelter program.

"It's a lot tougher than it looks," said Holmes, who was slightly out of breath as the triumphant trio came ashore.

Holmes said he and his shipmates built Hesed 3 in just a few days.

"It's a last-minute thing. That's why it looks so shoddy," he said, adding that the polyurethane waterproof sealant wasn't uniformly applied to the boat's surface. A soggy wedding cake of a ship sat in the sand, where a few inches of water had pooled.

In all, 19 homemade cardboard watercraft raced in seven heats, divided into categories for juniors, adults and sailors representing businesses and nonprofit organizations.