School boat from 2020 launched in New Hampshire is found in Norway

Sixth-grader near Dyrnes, Norway, found miniature boat covered in gooseneck barnacles

The 6ft-long boat was launched by New Hampshire middle school students in October 2020 (AP)

A miniature boat containing photos and fall leaves, which was set out in the Atlantic Ocean by middle school students in New Hampshire in 2020, has been found after a year in Norway.

The 6ft-long Rye Riptides, equipped with a tracking device that went silent for parts of the journey, was found by a sixth-grader on 1 February in Smola, a small island near Dyrnes, Norway.

According to local media, the ship had lost its hull and keel during the 8,300-mile journey and was covered in gooseneck barnacles. However, the deck and cargo hold were still intact.

The students and now-retired science teacher Sheila Adams filled the boat with photos of students from Rye Junior High, a facemask with their signatures on it, fall leaves, acorns and state quarters in October 2020, Portsmouth Herald reported.

In its cross-continent sail, the boat traversed more than 8,300 miles for 462 days before it was found by Karel Nuncic. The student took it to his school and opened it last week.

“When you’re sending it out, you have no idea where it’s going to end up, how it’s going to get there, if it ends up [anywhere] at all,” Cassie Stymiest, the executive director of Educational Passages, a Maine nonprofit that began working with the school on the project in 2018, said.

“But these kids, they put their hopes and dreams and wishes into it, and I tend to think sometimes that helps,” Ms Stymiest added.

The students set the boat out in the Atlantic Ocean and followed its path. The GPS went quiet after a few days but came back online during hurricane season, registering plot points in August and September around the same latitude as Ireland.

The signal disappeared again and the boat remained untraceable till 30 January, when the students learned that the boat had appeared to hit land just west of the small island in Norway.

“I was surprised the boat actually made it somewhere,” seventh-grader Molly Flynn said. “I thought it was going to get stuck in some middle spot [on the map] and it actually made it, and it was really, really cool and surprising,” she said.

The school in Norway is planning a call with Rye Junior High students soon.

Additional reporting by agencies