What goes around comes around

Season 4 of the Educational Passages Podcast continues with our "Imagine This" series — where the magic of miniboats comes alive through the voices and visions of those who make it all possible.

Each episode will paint a vivid picture of discovery, connection, and curiosity — not just tracking the voyages, but exploring the challenges and unexpected outcomes behind them.

Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this:

What happens when a miniboat shows up in the exact place where another crew was waiting for a different boat? At a school in New Hampshire — fifty-five miles from the ocean and famous for its own maple syrup — 311 students paint maple leaves on a miniboat, name her Tapping the Seas, and send her out into the ocean. What follows is a two-and-a-half-year voyage of mysterious loops and a slow spiral toward Bermuda — where a school there has been waiting for their own miniboat to come home. This is a story about wind, currents, patience, and the strange way the ocean sometimes brings the right boat to the right place at exactly the right time.

Visit educationalpassages.org/boats/tappingtheseas/ for more information about the boat and project, as well as educationalpassages.org/boats/coraltempest/ for more about the other miniboat mentioned in this episode.

Transcript

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Welcome

Welcome To Educational Passages

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to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences. I'm your host, Cassie Stymist. Welcome everybody to Season 4. Get ready to set sail on a brand new adventure as we launch our Imagine This series, where the magic of mini boats come alive through the voices and visions of those who make it all possible. In this series, each episode will paint a vivid picture of discovery, connection, and curiosity, not just tracking the voyages, but exploring the challenges and unexpected outcomes behind them. Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this. You're

Guilford Kids Build The Mini Boat

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a student at Guilford Elementary in New Hampshire. Your school is 55 miles from the ocean. You're curious about the wind and currents out there way out in the open ocean. So you and your entire school, you and 310 other students, get involved in the mini boat project. On the deck you paint maple leaves, 20 of them, one for every classroom. Maple leaves because you're from New Hampshire, but also because your school makes its own maple syrup. It's a whole thing. You name your boat tapping the seas, a little play on tapping the trees, a term used in the process of making maple syrup. You write letters for the cargo hold, hoping they'll reach another school somewhere in the world. You want to learn about other cultures, but that's part of the point. With the letters in the cargo hold, you also pack a stuffed panda because that's your school's mascot. You also pack a book on how to make maple syrup written by the second graders. You put bracelets, a journal, a gnome named Harley, and of course, maple syrup. On November

Shakedown Cruise Then Ocean Launch

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10th, 2023, you meet another student and her family at the dock in Belmont. You take Tapping the Seas out on Lake Winnesquam for what's called a shakedown cruise. It is cold, but she takes right off after launch. You circle around her in your boat to make waves, just to make sure she can write herself at sea. And she can. So next up, the open ocean. On November 22nd, Tapping the Seas is delivered to the docks of the Little Bay Lobster Company. The crew of the FV Rachel Leia takes her out into the Gulf of Maine after the long weekend. And on November 29th, Captain John sends this note We have deployed your mini boat today at 8 45, just east of the Munson Canyon. With that, your boat is on her own, out in the open ocean.

Daily Tracking And Ocean Surprises

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You track her every single day. You talk about her in technology class, in the library, in the hallways. She rides the Gulf Stream for only a few days, then starts to go south. Hmm. You wonder what happened because if the sale was up, wouldn't she stay in the Gulf Stream? A month after launch, you're reading a book in class and also checking the tracks. The tracks look just like the dog of the book. In February, staff from Educational Passages comes to your school to talk about the project. They see all the predictions, including yours, on the bulletin boards in the hallways. You all build smaller boats made out of recycled materials and have a little race. You learn that making boats takes a lot of engineering. By spring, your mini boat is out in the center of the Atlantic, no longer in the Gulf Stream. You wonder why that is again. Summer comes, everyone shifts up a grade. Tapping the seas keeps on sailing. Fall of twenty twenty four, a new school year. You keep tracking. She's moving eastward now a little more each day. By January, after the holiday break, you wonder, could she land in the Azores? But then she turns southeast. She sails parallel to the islands. But then in April she's heading southwest. Summer arrives again and she keeps going west. Fall

The Long Loop Toward Bermuda

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of twenty twenty five, another school year, and now your little boat looks like she might be heading straight to Bermuda. But then she loops. She zigzags. She loops again. What is going on out there, you wonder? In March she turns west again. By early April she's only one hundred and thirty nautical miles east of Bermuda. So you reach out to the school there, the Saltis, with their own mini boat, the Coral Tempest, launched just two months before. You ask them to keep an eye out for yours. But then more loops. Down and up, up and down, around and over. By the end of April, she's heading east again. Away from Bermuda. May comes more loops. Then on May 14th, she's back to being a hundred and thirty nautical miles east of Bermuda. Again. She heads straight north for a few days, then loops one more time. And suddenly she's heading west, northwest, almost directly toward Bermuda. Almost like the students there were calling her home. On May 22nd, she's 40 nautical miles away. The next day, 25. Closer and closer. On the morning of May 24th, you get an update.

The Radio Guided Recovery At Sea

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The mini boat captain there, Paul, says that he's heading out with a student's parent on a boat to try and intercept the tapping of the seas before she loops away again. They head out, but there's no cell service, no way to see where she is right now. Every hour her GPS pings a location, but it can't be checked way out there. So back on shore, someone from Educational Passages is calling her coordinates into the Bermuda Marine Operations Center, who relays them to the boat over the radio. Head northwest. She's moved a mile. Head north, she's turned again. The seas are calm. There she is. A little boat only a meter and a half long, sitting in the water like it was waiting to be recovered. The crew tosses a fishing line in. You never know what might be hiding underneath a floating object after this long at sea. And sure enough, they catch a Mahi Mahi. They also tap the seas. The mini boat was in surprisingly good shape for 907 days at sea. You remember building her, putting your letter inside the cargo hold, and tracking it every day. The miniboat goes to a school in Bermuda. The older miniboat crew, the students who launched the Coral Tempest just months earlier, share the surprise with the younger students there. They're the same age as you were when you started the project. They find the letters and syrup and panda and the little gnome named Harley. And back in New Hampshire, you find out at a Friday afternoon assembly. You see the photos of the crew in Bermuda opening the cargo hold, reading your letters. You all scream with joy at the news. Now your boat is on an island half the size of your own town after an adventure all around the Atlantic Ocean.

The Storyteller Meaning And Connection

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You built a boat to learn about wind and currents, to make predictions, to connect with another culture. The school that received her has a motto, prepare to meet the world. A perfect connection. And so is the name of the boat that recovered tapping the seas, the boat Peter drove out into the Atlantic to bring her home. It's the Shanichi. In Gaelic, a shanichy is a traditional storyteller, one who traveled between clans and villages carrying stories from one place to another, memorizing histories, reciting them for anyone who would listen, which, when you think about it, is exactly what happened here. A little boat launched at sea with 311 students to start in New Hampshire, following her every day, set adrift for 907 days, and then recovered 25 miles off of Bermuda by a boat named after a storyteller. Now two crews in two different places are dedicated to what comes next, because that's the thing about mini boats. They're not just boats, they're stories waiting to be written, and every boat starts with a blank page.

Donate, Subscribe, And Closing

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You have been listening to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization. Please consider making a donation to help us continue our work bringing people together to learn more about the ocean. To donate, head over to educationalpassages.org slash support. If you're enjoying this program, please consider subscribing to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or from wherever you download your podcasts. Thanks for listening.