Track the Gulf Stream with Maine Kids

Students from several Maine schools are taking part in a project to find out where little boats go when released in the Caribbean.  South Portland, Casco Bay, Belfast, Searsport and Mount Desert school students fashioned small boats and a kindly crew of  a Brazilian freighter released them at the agreed upon spot. The boats all have GPS transmitters on board, so we can all find out why all that warm tropical water seems to pass us by in favor of Europe!

Belfast high school's entry USS CPS

Equipped with sails, the boats will be influenced not only by currents but also by the wind. Each student has a bet about where his or her boat will end up.  These boats are not your typical kid boats, they are designed by a marine architect under the sponsorship of Educational Passages in Belfast, to withstand the long voyage and not get fouled by seaweed or fishing gear. They are 4 and a half feet long with a small downwind-type sail. Of course, the students did the building.

Although the latest boat release was about a month ago, the tracking site seems to label these boats as “2009 Atlantic passages” perhaps reflecting when the boats were built, rather than released. Each boat seems to have taken it’s own course and none appear in a hurry to get to France. Click on iBoat Track to see the position of all boats and then choose an individual boat to see its progress in a series of position readings every few hours. This is where the boats were on December 15. 2010:

from iBoattrack.com

The students hope to alert schools or town leaders on the shore of wherever their boats make landfall so that they can be retrieved. It looks like the Belfast boat has already come close to shore in the Dominican Republic. Check out updates for the Mount Desert entry here.

Thanks to WLBZ in Bangor, Maine for this story.

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