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By COLIN POWELL Students in the Union 93 schools of Blue Hill, Brooksville, Castine and Penobscot sponsored the vessel, which was launched by Maine Maritime Academy’s training ship, State of Maine, this June. With 12 pounds of ballast, Über Sail is designed to be both self-righting and self-steering. Of course, steering is a bit beside the point. Looking at a map of the path it has taken since being dropped nearly 600 nautical miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, a straighter path to Europe could certainly be found. Über Sail, subject to the wind and ocean currents, has doubled back on itself a half dozen times, and was even lost and thought sunk for a brief period shortly after its launch. Two weeks and 760 miles into the journey, the GPS unit stopped sending out updates. But then, as mysteriously as it had stopped, the boat showed up on the tracking Web site iboattrack.com, having moved along the edge of the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland. Of course, the trials and tribulations of the boat are half the adventure. Talking with Brooksville Elementary School librarian Rick Alexander, he pointed out that plans for using Über Sail’s journey in the classroom are still being worked out, but likely lessons will be about how ocean currents and wind connect what otherwise seems very distant. He noted similar lessons like the cargo ship that lost 29,000 rubber bath toys in the middle of the Pacific ocean in 1992. Even today, 17 years later, those toys are still washing up on the shores around the world including North America, Europe and Africa. “The ocean seems infinite,” said Alexander. “But it is just very slow moving.” Indeed, it has taken Über Sail more than six months, but it is finally approaching another land mass. While the GPS-enabled boat was intentionally launched, there are plenty of things that are intentionally and unintentionally dropped in the ocean every day. They all wash up somewhere. Being tossed and turned in the open ocean, Über Sail is not alone. At least not yet. Five other boats were launched with her, all from Maine Maritime Academy’s State of Maine during the 2008 training cruise. From off shore of Ponce, Puerto Rico, to Newfoundland, all were launched with the hope of making an Atlantic passage. Now only two remain. The first to end its voyage was Bluefish, many miles offshore of Cape Hatteras in May. After nearly two weeks and 300 miles up the coast towards Virginia, she reported her last position. Zenith, launched slightly further off the Newfoundland shore than Über Sail, caught a coastal current that took her nearly 1,000 miles over 40 days, landing on the coast of Nova Scotia where she was recovered and brought back to her sponsoring school in Camden. The other three boats managed to get further along in their trans-Atlantic voyages. K-Kids Kruiser, the last to be launched, meandered quite a bit off the North American coast before leaving the Grand Banks for the open ocean of the North Atlantic. On November 9 she stopped reporting her position, though with others having suffered similar fates, there is hope she will show up on the map again. In the meantime, two vessels continue to update their position. C.P.S. is now less than 500 miles off the coast of Northern Spain, while Über Sail closes in on the French coast. The boats are part of a program called Educational Passages, run by Richard Baldwin out of Belfast. In his second year of unmanned vessel launches, Baldwin has partnered with a number of people and organizations to make it possible for students of all ages to learn about GPS technology and ocean patterns. The hope also is that when the vessel comes ashore, the recovery can be coordinated with people in far-off places. For Über Sail this likely means France, a country where Adams School in Castine has a particular interest. For the past two years, Adams School has been part of an exchange with students in southwestern France from the small village of Saint Castin, which shares its namesake with Castine. During the French school’s first visit to Maine last year, a freelance journalist, Pierre Mahé, from Pau, the nearest city to Saint Castin, spent the week with the French students. He also came a few weeks early and participated in a number of events in Maine, including the sea trials of Über Sail in Belfast. “I hope I will be able to recover Über Sail if she approaches [near enough] to our coast,” wrote Mahé in a recent e-mail. After receiving a message from Principal Todd Nelson at the Adams School, Mahé wrote, “I called one of my friends who is preparing a paddling race between Africa and French Guyana. He trains on the Basque coast and he knows a lot of people to spread the story of Über Sail and to make an alert network.” But over the past month, Über Sail has shifted directions towards Northern France and the Brittany coastline. Mahé warns that the Brittany coast is a more dangerous location for Über Sail to land, with a rocky coastline very similar to Maine. It is also tempest season. Still, Mahé is extending his network to local yacht clubs and harbors and still hopes to recover the boat. Alexander pointed out that besides the rocky coast as the boat nears shore, a whole host of other problems can arise. While the sea may seem an open expanse, shipping traffic around the English Channel and ports along the European coastline provide a gauntlet for a 4 1/2’ fiberglass vessel. So far Über Sail’s path has taken it away from the very dangerous English Channel, but when you are at the mercy of the wind and currents, directions can shift at a moment’s notice, so the Union 93 schools remain on alert, watching the updates come in live at http://iboattrack.com. In a recent e-mail, Baldwin noted that each school sponsoring boats has made different plans for their projects. In Camden, the high school team sponsoring Zenith noticed their boat traveling 35 m.p.h. down a rural highway in Nova Scotia. Using Google Earth geo-location software they found and contacted the person who recovered the boat and organized getting it on Maine Maritime Academy’s Arctic schooner Bowdoin while it was docked in Newfoundland this past summer. The path of Zenith is now being used to teach an earth science class. In Union 93, the schools are still waiting to see where Über Sail will end the more than 2,000-mile adventure it has been on since June 8. Baldwin said he expects the boat to make landfall within the next three weeks, and added that if it is recovered, any number of things can happen, though he hopes it can be put back in the water to continue following the wind and currents of the ocean to see where it winds up, as it follows the path of the first European explorers to the New World 500 years ago. The current location of Über Sail , as well as all the other boats still reporting their position can be viewed live http://2009.educationalpassages.com. Return to the The Weekly Packet home page. |
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