A mini boat that was swept from Newfoundland’s Grand Banks to Achill Island in Storm Erik is due to be relaunched off Ireland sometime in the next few weeks.

The Newfoundland students who first helped to launch the 1.8m (6ft) Raven Kaster are working with Achill island pupils on preparing it for another sea voyage.

This time, it will also collect ocean climate data and may end up off the Iberian coast or up in Scandinavia, depending on where it is launched.

“The way ocean currents work, we don’t know where it will land, and a lot depends on where we launch it again,” Thomas Sheppard, a teacher at Frank Roberts Junior High in Newfoundland, explained.

“The only way it would return to North America is if it is launched off the coast of Africa,” he said.

Canadian students Stephanie Evans and Kaitlyn Grandy, who led the project back in 2018 while at school, recalled that they weren’t sure if they would ever see their little craft again when they were reunited with it for the first time this past weekend in Galway.

“We had the GPS track on it after it was launched by a Maersk ship for us on the Grand Banks in November 2018, and it looked like it was going to bypass Ireland and head south,” Evans recalled.

“Then we saw it heading for a little island off Ireland, and we just hoped there were people there! “ she said.

Raven Kaster, as the craft is named, was washed up on Dookinella Beach on Achill Island after 102 days at sea, and was found there in February 2019 by local fisherman Darren Kilbane.

Evans and Grandy have travelled to Ireland with Sheppard, their teacher, to meet pupils at Coláiste Pobail Acla secondary school and their deputy principal, Karen Lavelle, who are working on the re-launch project.

One of their first stops was at Galway Atlantaquaria in Salthill to view the Raven Kaster. They will also discuss the re-launch logistics with the Marine Institute in Galway this coming week.

Neither Evans nor Grandy had heard of Achill Island when the GPS track indicated it had landed there.

The 1.8m (six ft) boat was purchased through Educational Passages, a non-profit company that runs a mini boat programme.

“Most of them are GPS based, with solar power for the GPS and sail, along with a cargo hold for notes which the students can leave inside,” Sheppard explained.

“Now it is going to be fitted with software which will allow for measuring air temperature, water temperature, orientation, and it will have a camera – stuff we didn’t have available to us when we launched the boat back in 2018,” Sheppard said.

“It wasn’t in bad condition when Darren Kilbane found it, and his daughter Ria is one of the transition year students who has been working on it,” Lavelle explained.

“We hope the Marine Institute’s research ship Celtic Voyager will take it out to the Porcupine before the winter storm season. Depending on the weather and ocean currents, it could go up or down the Atlantic,” she said.

Captain Jacek Berenek of the container ship, ‘Independent Horizon,’ on its regular monthly call to the Port of Cork’s Deepwater Berth at Ringaskiddy, explained to the pupils of Barryroe National School from West Cork where he would launch their mini-boat into the Atlantic Ocean. With his Chief Officer, Naumowicz Jaroslaw, he showed the boys and girls from Barryroe a chart of the ocean area, explaining how winds and tides would carry their boat, ‘Realt na Mara,’ back towards the American coastline where it had originally been made by the sixth-grade students of Morristown Beard School in Boston.

“It is useful for the school to learn more about the sea. You are Irish, living close to the sea, you should celebrate that you are living in such a place,” he told them. “We will launch your boat as we get close to the coast of America on our voyage. This is a good project for young people to learn about the tides, the currents, about the sea.”

Captain Jacek Berenek of the Independent Horizon explains to Barryroe Pupils where Realt Na Mara will be launched

This was at Ringaskiddy deepwater port in Cork Harbour, where the ‘Independent Horizon’ was loading containers. She calls every four weeks on a run that connects Cork and the South of Ireland with Wilmington on the Delaware River and Chester City in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She is a supporter of Educational Passages, a non-profit organisation based in Maine, USA, which connects schools around the world to the oceans and each other. Its approach is a "21st Century version” of the old-style ‘Message in a Bottle’ across the oceans, using modern technology. The mini boats are five feet long, under two metres, uncrewed, GPS-tracked, student-built little vessels. They have a satellite transmitter, solar-powered, enabling the boats to be tracked as they sail the oceans.

“Our Miniboat Programme empowers students to become citizen scientists and global ocean stewards,” the organisation says. “They enable connection with the local school and community where a boat lands and advance learning about cultures around the world, tracking their mini boats while learning about ocean currents, weather, technology and much more about the oceans.”

The ‘Crimson Current’ was the name of the mini boat from Morristown Beard School launched by ship in the North Atlantic in April of last year. Tracking was lost as it approached the Irish coast. Rory Jackson from Tragumna, who runs West Cork Ocean Tours and the Oceans Plastics Project for schools, was contacted. Helped by local fisherman Billy McCarthy, gauging currents and tides, they figured Barry’s Cove on the Seven Heads Peninsula, southeast of Clonakilty, would be a likely arrival point. On July 5 last year, they were proved correct. Using a kayak to enter a cave, Billy McCarthy found the boat. “It was at the back of the cave, small, not that easy to see, but afloat and I recovered it.”

Billy McCarthy who found the mini boat and his daughter Katie

Rory Jackson took it to Barryroe National School. When opened,’ Crimson Current’ contained various items, including a baseball, an Abraham Lincoln coffee mug, a Morristown Beard baseball cap and a USA jersey. Contact was made from 5th and 6th Class with the sixth formers in Boston from the boardroom of Barryroe Co-op. That developed into the West Cork students refurbishing and re-naming the little vessel - ‘Realt na Mara.’

One of the Barryroe pupils, Scarlet O’Mahony, told me that the pupils made a new sail, designed, symbolising County Cork, the coastal and countryside of Ireland. “We have wildlife on it, showing that Ireland is full of Nature. We have included the history of Ireland and that we are an island, shown our national sport, and even put in a tin whistle, the instrument we play in our school. Our boat is signed by both 5th and 6th classes, and the hull has horseshoes, tea bags, a hurley and a signed Barryroe Jersey, amongst lots of other items that we have put into it. We will be following the mini boats GPS tracker with great interest over the weeks ahead,”

“Whether you’re on the coast or land-locked, anyone can take part as the programme creates an ocean classroom,” the Educational Passages organisers say. “Our Miniboat Programme offers an extraordinary way for people of all ages to learn crucial skills, discover maritime careers and build connections that will last a lifetime. It engages participants in collaborative learning through international cultural experiences and increases the understanding of the value of water on our planet as a shared resource through ocean literacy. Over the last decade, new boat designs, partnerships and ambitions have expanded its scope. People of all ages and across dozens of countries track the little boats. Clubs, schools, libraries, individuals and foundations have joined what is now an international educational community connecting and educating students by building, launching, and recovering the boats, spanning the globe; it’s an ocean of educational opportunities.”

Listen on my Podcast here to the Captain of the Independent Horizon explaining his voyage to the Barryroe pupils and to one of the pupils, Scarlet O’Mahony, telling me what they had learned from the project.