Boat built by US fifth-graders arrives in Norway after 462-day journey in the Atlantic
A small boat built by ambitious fifth-graders was launched across the Atlantic Ocean in 2020 and arrived safely in Norway covered in gooseneck barnacles after 462 days of sailing, according to a New Hampshire middle school.
A Norwegian sixth grade student and his puppy found the boat on the small island of Smøla and “brought it to his classmates, who were curious to discover the contents of the cargo inside the hatch of the mysterious boat,” the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, the capital of Norway, said on Feb. 9.
Now, the sixth grade class in Norway has “opened the hatch to find our package of materials all dry inside,” Rye Jr. High School, which is about 50 miles east of Concord, wrote Feb. 13 on Facebook.
The New Hampshire students had placed a package of letters, photos, quarters and leaves inside, Seacoastonline reported.
The “Rye Riptides” mini boat was launched into the Gulf Stream on Oct. 25, 2020, after a kit for building it was delivered to the school in September 2018, according to Educational Passages, a nonprofit that helped the students on the endeavor.
It was “prepared” by fifth grade classes for two years as COVID-19 “interrupted” the project, the school said. Now, the U.S. students are in sixth and seventh grade.
The vessel emitted a final GPS signal on Jan. 30, and the Norwegian boy’s family “offered to go look for it using the GPS coordinates” after the school notified the island community about it, the school’s Feb. 10 Facebook post said.
Photos show how the boat looked when it arrived in Norway compared to how it did when it was sent out into the sea.
“It doesn’t look like our boat now! The part that survived was the hold for the GPS and our bag of trinkets,” the school wrote.
The executive director of Educational Passages, Cassie Stymiest, described the endeavor as “magical” when speaking with Seacoastonline.
“There’s so much hope in it, you really just don’t know what’s going to happen. When you’re sending it out, you have no idea where it’s going to end up, how it’s going to get there, if it ends up (anywhere) at all,” Stymiest told the outlet. “But these kids, they put their hopes and dreams and wishes into it and I tend to think sometimes that helps.”
The New Hampshire students and the Norwegian class are scheduled to chat over a video call in the near future, according to Seacoastonline.
“We’re inspired to see these citizen scientists working together as global ocean stewards!” the U.S. Embassy said.
A map of all of Educational Passage’s boats currently at sea can be viewed here.
This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 2:26 PM with the headline "Boat built by US fifth-graders arrives in Norway after 462-day journey in the Atlantic."
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