Waterford wanderer reaches land again
Student’s unmanned sailboat arrives in England after earlier stop in Ireland
Waterford — An unmanned sailboat that already crossed the Atlantic from Waterford to Ireland’s west coast has made another landing, this time sailing from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to southern England.
As part of a project in her science class with Waterford High School science teacher Michael O’Connor, then-senior Kaitlyn Dow built the 5-foot Lancer using materials from a Maine-based educational nonprofit organization called Educational Passages.
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution released the boat into the Atlantic Ocean in April 2016. In September, the Lancer landed on a small island off the coast of County Galway, Ireland, and was picked up by an Irish 8-year-old named Méabh Ní Ghionnáin, who had been tracking the boat’s GPS location.
O’Connor launched an online fundraiser to pay for repairs to the boat, which had some small leaks in the hull, and to help pay for Dow to travel to Ireland to meet Méabh and reunite with the Lancer.
Donations from individuals, and money from the Connecticut Sea Grant College Program at UConn, generated more than $3,500 to help pay for Dow to travel to Ireland, repair the boat and set it back out to sea.
Méabh’s classmates and members of the Sea Scouts, an international organization based on boating and water-based activities similar to the Boy Scouts, took over the project from there.
They gave the boat a new coat of paint, some repairs and a new red sail to make it resemble a Galway hooker, a kind of
traditional Irish wooden boat. The crew of a research vessel from the Irish governmental research agency Marine Institute set it back into the Atlantic Ocean about halfway between Ireland and Canada’s east coast in April.
Months later, the Lancer, which looked for a while like it would return to Ireland, followed the currents and winds on a slightly more southern path. As it approached the mouth of the River Yealm in Devon, England, O’Connor, who was tracking the boat via a GPS device that has broadcast its location over its trans-Atlantic journeys, alerted the local media that the Connecticut visitor might soon be landing on their shores.
Then, in bad weather, the Lancer’s signal went dark.
“I was convinced that it had either crashed on the rocks or sank,” O’Connor said.
On Saturday at about 5 a.m. in Connecticut, O’Connor got an email.
“I am pleased to say that last night we recovered Lancer the boat off some rocks in the River Yealm,” wrote Matthew Endicott. “She seems to have taken on a bit of water and the tan sail has a broken batten.”
Endicott said he had seen the Lancer Friday, but didn’t know what it was and left it in the river. Later, a friend who had seen local news reports about the boat told him what it was at a local pub, and the two went to recover it that night. They found O’Connor’s email on a note in the Lancer’s waterproof hull, along with souveniers from the Irish elementary school where it had last been.
Endicott wrote that he plans to bring the Lancer to the elementary school where his partner teaches.
O’Connor said he hopes to contact a research institution or university near Devon and set the boat out on another voyage, this one possibly farther south.
Meanwhile, rising Waterford High School junior Robert Sammataro is building a new boat — named Shamu — that will be released off the coast of South America in September.