Three months, 273 cans of White Claw, and over 400 hot glue sticks later, 22-year-old Taylor Hancock has finished his quarantine project: the S.S. Clawdia.
Hancock told the Daily Dot he got the idea to construct a boat entirely out of White Claw cans simply because he was drinking the beverage a lot during quarantine, and rather than throw the empty cans away, he was keeping them.
Originally, he used the cans to build a person named “Clawdia.” After Clawdia fell over, he salvaged the cans, collected more, and in the middle of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie marathon, inspiration struck.
“I thought why not go pirates and see if we can make (a boat that) floats and go a bit bigger,” Hancock said.
He posted a YouTube video showing the unfinished boat on June 19. Another video from July 20 shows Hancock putting the boat in the water.
“We only have so much time on this earth, and we should spend that time doing things with real meaning,” the YouTube description of the video reads. “Some people choose to spend their time expanding their minds or giving back to society. I built a boat out of white claw cans. I have zero regrets let’s see if she floats.”
Though Hancock said he wasn’t surprised that the S.S. Clawdia floated, he was shocked to see that it could hold three dogs without sinking.
Hancock also tweeted a short video of the boat floating with Captain WhitePaw, aka a Pug named Lily, standing guard. The tweet has over 18,000 likes as of publication time and was retweeted with a comment by White Claw.
“When you don’t need to hunt treasure because you ARE the treasure,” the brand account tweeted.
At the end of the video, Hancock shows himself jumping onto the boat, and, to no one’s surprise, it breaks in half.
“There’s one last thing that we have to try, I’m aware of what the outcome is going to be but i have to do it,” Hancock said in the video. “I have to literally sink the thing that I’ve sunk so much time into.”
While he’s not sure exactly how much money he spent on the project, the Daily Dot estimates it was around $400.
“I bought the cheapest hot glue gun on Amazon because I just didn’t know where I was going with this,” Hancock said. “By the end I had this thing that looks like a glue gun but was covered in dried hot glue and was barely working and I could barely pull the trigger.”
Hancock said White Claw reached out to him following the Tweet, and even though he’s already recycled the cans from the boat, he may start another project soon.
“If (White Claw) wants me to build a life sized pirate ship, they can supply the white claw and I’ll supply the hot glue,” Hancock said.
Hancock said he worked on the project for a few hours a week at a time as he and other people in his house drank more White Claws. Because he lives in Los Angeles, California, where coronavirus cases are still on the rise and the statewide reopening is rolling back, according to the LA Times, the project was something to keep him busy and became slightly therapeutic.
“I’ve used (this) time to build boats out of cans and paint paintings and build a garden,” Hancock said. “(I’m) just kind of trying (to) find something to do that feels, even if it’s not important, feels like it can help (me) process what’s going on and not just sit and scroll through TikTok for hours.”
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