Sail and Bail challenge back for its 21st year

By Lethbridge Herald on December 10, 2025.

Nathan Reiter
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Some of the sharpest young minds from across Southern Alberta will be at the University of Lethbridge on Wednesday for the 21st annual Sail and Bail cardboard boat race.

Five teams will compete in either the junior (Grades 7-9) or Senior (Grades 10-12) The event is run by Career Transition, a not-for-profit community organization that delivers programming for secondary students to explore career options.

Judy Stolk-Ingram is the executive director of Career Transition and spoke to the Herald over the phone on Tuesday about the event.

“Time flies when we’re having fun.” Stolk-Ingram said. “Last year we gave it a name, so sale and bail. So we called it just the cardboard bowl race for 19 years and somebody made the brilliant suggestion that we should give the event a name.”

The event will take place in two separate areas on campus. All of the construction will take place on indoor track at the Co-op Centre for Sports & Recreation while the boat races will take place in the Max Bell Regional Aquatic Centre.

“We could not ever do this without the support of the University of Lethbridge, so they are an important partner in this and the event wouldn’t happen without them.” Stolk-Ingram explained.

 “I’d also like to just mention that this year we have a number of business and industry sponsors. We launched a Float Their Boats campaign earlier in the fall and we had a number, I think we had 10 different businesses that met the challenge. We certainly appreciate the sponsors’ investment in basically who is going to be their future workforce.”

While the ultimate goal of the cardboard boat race is to have fun, Stolk-Ingram says it is a good exercise to build skills that students will need to utilize in a career.

“Some of those technical skills are certainly around design and construction, those sorts of things. But even more importantly, are more of those soft skills that students will eventually need to use in work environments. Things like teamwork, communication, leadership, and problem-solving. They’re on their own, they’ve got to figure it out.

“ They don’t have a teacher to go to guide them and coach them on every step. They have to do that themselves and of course, there’s the element of working under pressure. They have 90 minutes. Got to get it done. If it’s not built, it’s not going to float for sure. It’s kind of simulating the pressure that can happen in a workplace as well.”

Construction of the boats begins at 10 a.m. with the races and weight challenge at 12:30 p.m. The final awards ceremony is scheduled for 2 p.m.