Middle schoolers from New Hampshire launched a small boat in the Atlantic Ocean in October 2020. They tracked the mini-boat for almost a year. Then it vanished.
But it wasn’t gone forever. Earlier this year, the boat washed ashore in Norway. It had spent 462 days at sea and traveled more than 8,000 miles.
An organization called Educational Passages ran the project. Its goal is to teach kids about ocean currents and connect them with students in other parts of the world. Students from Rye Junior High in New Hampshire built and made decorations for their boat. They named it Rye Riptides.
The boat was equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. That enabled the students to track its location. But they lost the signal last September.
When the GPS pinged again four months later, it showed the boat was in Norway. Sixth-grader Karel Nuncic found the boat on a tiny island near his home in Smøla. Karel cleaned the boat and brought it to school the next day to show his classmates.
“They thought it was exciting and wondered what was inside,” Karel explains.
Inside the boat, the students found a face mask signed by the Rye students, class photos, a letter, and other items.
Soon after, Karel’s class met the students from Rye Junior High on a video call. Now, Rye Riptides is proudly displayed at Karel’s school.
“It’s really cool that this little boat has connected two small towns that are an ocean apart,” Caitlin Tabit, a sixth-grader at Rye Junior High.