What started as a junior-high class project turned into an expedition across the Atlantic, bridging the gap between two continents.
A small unmanned sailboat, constructed and launched by students in New Hampshire, voyaged all the way to Norway, where it washed ashore and was found by a family over a year later.
Their young son took it to school where he, alongside excited classmates and teachers, opened the cargo hatch. It contained a clutch of messages and trinkets placed there by the American kids—and the moment was aired on Norway’s national news.
Through GPS tracking, a team in Massachusetts had followed the ship’s progress for part of its 462-day journey, though there were long periods when it went silent. The boat, Rye Riptides, had sailed a total distance of over 8,300 miles.
The project was a collaboration between Rye Junior High and nonprofit Educational Passages, based in Maine. Aimed at developing a host of skills and knowledge, it began in 2020, when fifth graders in Ms. Sheila Adams’s science class began building.
Educational Passages delivered a kit for making the 5.5-foot unmanned vessel.
As excitement began to swell at seeing the mini-boat come together, the pandemic hit and students were sent home for the rest of the school year. Not to be deterred, they each created a piece of artwork for the deck, which was submitted and made into a collage. The boat was then ready to sail.
On Oct. 25, 2020, Rye Riptides finally set sail. The first leg of the voyage was from Massachusetts to Florida, which took six weeks. The Sea Education Association in Woods Hole volunteered to launch Rye Junior High’s boat, alongside another, Sojourner’s Truth, from JFK Middle School in Northampton.
Chief scientist Dr. Jeffrey Schell, who launched both mini-boats from the quarterdeck of much larger ship Corwith Cramer, described the exciting moment.
“When Rye Riptides and Sojourner’s Truth hit the water, there was a raucous cheer from the crew as both mini-boats caught the wind immediately,” he said.
The boats’ fates were now at the mercy of the seas. Rye Riptides’s tracking device would sometimes go quiet and they’d wonder if all was lost. After 10 months, during hurricane season, children and teachers began getting intermittent reports. Around September, they discovered their boat was at about the same latitude as Ireland—until it vanished.
It would not show itself again until the end of January, when it appeared to have hit a small, desolate island in Norway. The little boat was battered when the Nuncic family found it with help from social media.
The mast, hull, and keel were gone, and it was covered in barnacles. But Karel Nuncic, the sixth grader who took the boat to his school, Smøla barneskole, was thrilled the next day to find the deck and cargo hold intact.
Ms. Adams has since retired, but the adventurous project she helped launch lives on. Video linkups between Rye Junior High and the Norwegian school are planned, celebrating the unlikely bond formed across the pond.
“What I find so special about Educational Passages is that it combines education with the mystery of a message in a bottle and the hope of making a human connection across the sea,” remarked Schell.
