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.