Manteo Middle School students place the miniboat they’re building on a table in their classroom in Manteo on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. Kelsey Oglesby, the school’s career development coordinator, is pictured on the far left, and Dr. Shannon Castillo, Dare County Schools’ director of administrative services and career and technical education, stands in the middle in the back. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)
By Corinne Saunders
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MANTEO — The small sailboat students at Manteo Middle School are building is almost ready for its test run in the sound before it launches on its journey in the Atlantic Ocean.
According to teachers, the test run will take place in the next couple weeks before winter break begins, and the ocean launch should happen early next year. The small sailboat will be rigged with a GPS system so that the community can track its travels online.
Manteo Middle’s technology and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) classes have been working in small teams, each focused on a specific component of the build, since they opened the miniboat kit on Sept. 30.
Students sanded and painted the boat and its rudder, attached the rudder, designed a sail and named the boat after putting top choices to a schoolwide vote. “Croatoan’s Revenge” is the name, a nod to the area’s Indigenous inhabitants.
Students painted the miniboat’s name, a map of Roanoke Island and the school’s name and logo on the sail.
In coming days, they will drill holes to attach the sail, sensors and the GPS antenna, Kelsey Oglesby, the school’s career development coordinator, said on Monday.
“I think the kids have done a great job,” Oglesby said.
She was involved in coordinating the project, which is the first-ever miniboat undertaking in Dare County. Educational Passages, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit, designs the miniboat kits and hosts a website that includes maps of each miniboat’s travels.
The nonprofit’s mission to connect people globally with the ocean and with each other, according to its website.
Cassie Stymiest, executive director of Educational Passages, said that two miniboats washed up in Corolla since she’d come to the Outer Banks in September.
Cassie Stymiest (center) and Daryn Clevesy (right), executive director and program coordinator of Educational Passages, respectively, interact with students at Manteo Middle School on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)
Stymiest and Daryn Clevesy, program coordinator for Educational Passages, came to see the students’ progress in person on Monday. So did Charles Perry, a Colington resident and world-renowned marlin fisherman, who paid for the kit after encountering a miniboat while he was participating in a fishing tournament.
Perry was pleased with students’ progress.
“When I first came here, I saw how they were kind of overwhelmed when they opened up the box, and now they’re progressing quite rapidly,” he said.
Some of the STEM students at Manteo Middle School in Manteo stand behind the miniboat they’re building and hold up their sail on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)
Stymiest showed students online maps of the tracks of several current miniboats in the Atlantic, explaining how some stay at sea for years and that their paths are unpredictable.
One miniboat launched from Connecticut washed up in Ireland, where a young girl found it, and a Connecticut high school student went to Ireland and met her, Stymiest said. Then they relaunched it.
She encouraged the miniboat team to complete a “Meet the Fleet” activity, introducing the students who launched it, for the benefit of the finders.
“What if this is found, like, five years from now?,” Stymiest asked students. “There was a miniboat from Maine that took seven years before being found in Ireland.”
A student observing the map of miniboat travels projected in the room asked how many miniboats had landed in Norway or Ireland.
Stymiest said about three boats have washed up in Norway over the last couple years, and six or seven have landed in Ireland. She credited the Gulf Stream for those movements.
“Are you enjoying the project? That’s the most important part,” she said, as students nodded.
The teachers involved said the biggest obstacle was getting started and compared that to just jumping into a cold pool and learning as they went.
Perry said the students would similarly “learn by being participants.”
“They’re very good about figuring things out,” STEM teacher Stevie Gallop said.
The school’s endeavor now has a dedicated Instagram page at mms_mini_boat. For more information about Educational Passages, visit www.miniboats.org.
“Croatoan’s Revenge” rests on a desk at Manteo Middle School on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)
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