Norwegian Student Finds Boat Made 8000 Miles Away By New Hampshire Students

Have you ever thrown a message in a bottle into the sea? It has been done by thousands of people throughout the ages and sometimes, those messages may even reach somebody who reads them.

It seems as if something similar happened when a bunch of fifth-graders in New Hampshire made a small boat and set it adrift.

Those students from Rye Junior High School put some Momento’s in the boat along with a GPS tracker and on October 25, 2020, the boat was released. They documented the boat’s journey on Facebook.

The students were doing this as part of a project designed to help them understand more about the ocean. As it turns out, they learned something about the ocean as well as how all something amazing can happen, if you allow it to do so.

https://www.facebook.com/RyeJrHigh/posts/1824026094472219

Although the boat was only 5.5 feet long, it was able to travel some 8800 miles across the open ocean. Eventually, it was found by another student in Norway.

They began to build the boat prior to COVID but when the pandemic happened, construction was halted. Fortunately, the executive director of Educational Passages, Cassie Stymiest, was there to assist.

The students sent any decorations to attach to the boat and eventually, it was launched in October 2020. Students were able to tie in through Facebook to watch the launching into the Atlantic Ocean.

https://www.facebook.com/RyeJrHigh/posts/1829138610627634

The Gulfstream was home to the Ride Rip Tides for 462 days, as the small boat was carried along and the GPS was tracking. When the boat stopped sending GPS information on September 30, 2021, they assumed that it had been destroyed.

What they weren’t expecting was for a final ping to be registered and to come in on January 31, 2022. It seems as if the boat wanted to announce it had ended its journey of some 8000 miles when it landed in Smøla, Norway.

They started to look for someone in the local area to go get the boat and it just so happened that a sixth-grader lived nearby. That student, along with their parent, went to retrieve the boat that had now been covered with particles and was missing both the hull and the mast.

https://www.facebook.com/RyeJrHigh/posts/1831549897053172

Even though the boat was damaged to a large extent, there were still many of the items included inside of it. This included US quarters, leaves, and a facemask that was autographed by one of the students.

In the end, the students learned more about the ocean than they probably thought they would. They also learn something about community and how students can come together, even when they are thousands of miles apart.