Neptune

1st Voyage

• June 14, 2021 - Report from the Documentarian Team

  Documentarian News for the Sailing Vessel Neptune | June 14, 2021
  By Jett, Lydia, & Relio

  Sailing Vessel Neptune Article

  Mr Boken’s seventh grade class waited until February for their Teacher to get a grant for the Mini boat. He eventually got one from the HB Fuller company. The plan was to spend every Wednesday for the rest of the year at school working on the mini boats. At first students spent the time choosing teams. There were many options from Climatology programers, to Social Media.

  The first day students came in was February 24, early in the morning. It was mostly just figuring out what their jobs were going to be until the boat launched. Some students who were planning to stay remote for the year even came in to begin sanding.

  And so it began, every wednesday teams met both live and on google meets,but before teams like the hull and sail team could begin designing, the class had to choose a name for the boat.

  Over the course of about two weeks students put in the google classroom ideas for names of the boat and their reason why they believed it should be chosen. They ranged from Poseidon to Bob. When the time finally came for the boat’s name to be chosen there was a total of forty-three names. Then students voted on their top twenty names, and the ones with the most votes moved on to the next round and they did the same with five names, and finally two. The last two names were Neptune and Stella-Nova. Neptune won, fourteen to eight.

  Now every team that had a job painting, started to design their parts of the boat. The teams were inspired by the name Neptune and chose to represent both the Roman deity and the planet. The Hull and keel team chose to paint an ocean scene and the deck and sail decided to paint the night sky with the planet and its moons. To prepare teams sanded and drilled.

  The PR team and IR digital media team were in charge of contacting professionals for the different departments to meet with. The teams that had to paint, met with Holly Andres, an artist and photographer. She also met with the documentarian and social media teams to discuss the best ways to tell a story using photos and videos. The Quartermasters met with a professional climatoligist Tyler Kranz and learned more about currents and wind speeds.

  The day April 25th was spent at Marine Park in Vancouver Washington with the keel team testing the mini boat in the waters of the Columbia by prodding it and flipping it over to see if it righted itself. Overall the venture was successful but their was work to be done.

  On May fifth teams finally came into paint, starting with spray paint, mixing and first coats outside Mrs. Gerlach’s (Wyeasts art teacher) classroom. Some class days were even spent outside in the shade putting the finishing touches on the boat.
  Other teams like Cargo transport spent time drilling holes in Mr.Burris’s class and planning what would go in the hold. Climatology programmers started attaching sensors. Quartermasters chose to drop the boat off the shore of California, near Eureka one hundred miles out. The boat was finally coming together as some teams finished up their jobs.

  On June 1st the class found out they would be meeting with state representative Jamie Herrera Butler in only three days. Each team wrote a short speech about what they did to contribute to the boat. On June 7th the class prepared by setting up the mini boat and logging on to a zoom meeting. Overall it went smooth with only a few hiccups with remote students speaking. Ms. Butler agreed to put a note in the cargo hold along with the letters and flags.

  On June 10th the plan was to hold the christening ceremony at Wyeast at 4:45. Almost all the class made it. The IR Digital Media team did an amazing job announcing all the different events. People read poetry, gave speeches and participated in different cultural ceremonies like, sprinkling salt over the boat to purify, honoring the three winds and spinning the boat three times clockwise. The last event was the crashing of the bottle against metal. On the first try sponsors Alex Mcimillan and Catriona Foreman broke the sparkling cider on the first try. Dominic Garza read the toast and the students drank, celebrating the end of an amazing project and a difficult school year.

  Neptune was released into the open ocean on June 30th and Wyeast Middle Schools Excel 8th grade class moved on to eighth grade waiting for news of their mini boat.

• Video reports from all the teams!

  Documentarian Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=242483971031799

  Sail Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=344567560379893

  Deck Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=111240881152420 

  Social Media Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=571452777198504 

  Climatology Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=527505901821349

  Keel Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=807695053276608 

  Hull Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=566038114400911 

  Quartermasters Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=347613706987358

  Public Relations Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=353374072809069 

  Cargo Transport Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=528022564980718 

  International and Government Relations Team https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1000578840685867

• Photo Gallery of Student Work

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• July 18, 2021 - Launched and successfully reporting sensor data

  It was then up to Mr. Boken to coordinate the deployment. Even though school had ended for the year, students stayed connected through an online classroom. 

  Mr. Boken reached out to Mr. Nate Sandel, the Education Director at CRMM and lead Captain of the CRMM Miniboat Program. Mr. Sandel was heading out to launch two of their miniboats, Destiny and Second Wind from the Alaskan Sunrise. Mr. Boken was welcomed aboard and a triple launch of miniboats happened 100 km west of Garibaldi on July 18. Destiny and Second Wind traveled down the coast and landed in California, but Neptune traveled south. 

  The miniboat Neptune was launched on 7/18/21 at 16:30 GMT. Special thanks to the CRMM Miniboat Program and Nate Sandel for coordinating this launch and allowing Mr. Boken to join the fun.

  Here is the launch video:

   

  

  This miniboat is the first miniboat with a Maker Buoy adapted sensor package. It is outfit with air temperature, water temperature, and orientation sensors onboard. It also has a camera!

  On July 19 at 14:33 UTC, the first ever high res photo from the deck of a miniboat at sea reported through the satellite (see below). Congratulations to Wy’east Middle School!

  

  Here are a couple of moon light pictures that came in later:

  

  Zoom in to the map below to see the data reporting from the sensor package.

  Unfortunately, the Neptune stopped reporting on August 12.

• September 27, 2021 - Report from 1,099 km away

  On September 27, the Neptune sent a location message 1,099 km away from the last report on August 12. It was traveling at about 1.84 knots at the time. The students were again engaged in their online classroom.

• March 23, 2022 - Recovered in Hawaii!

  Reports after September 27 happened in December and then again on Monday, March 21, but they did not have locations reported. It was, however, further evidence that the boat was still afloat. On Tuesday, March 22, the students had a discussion about that March 21 report. 

  And after 5 months of not knowing where the Neptune sailed to, teacher Joe Boken received a phone call from a fisherman with the answer: Hawaii!

  

  On March 23, 2022, the Finest Kind Sportfishing Maui’s The Reel Hooker, set out 3 hours out of Lahaina, Hawaii. They were a few miles off the far side of Lanai when they spotted a “floater.” This is what fishermen call drifting debris that’s been floating for a long time , and under these “floaters” tend to be congretating Mahi Mahi, which is what they are always on the lookout for. In this spot, they ended up catching a Mahi Mahi (see picture) but then pilot whales showed up and scared the fish away. They went to investigate the “floater” and found what appeared to be a little boat partially submerged in the water with only the sail and bow on the surface. They recovered the vessel to find that it was a student project from Wy’east Middle School. 

  

  The boat was brought to a school on Maui and there are now plans to connect students virtually. Mr. Boken said when asked what the next steps were, “It’s not up to me. This is the students’ project. I hope the students on Maui will open up the cargo hold and see the messages inside, repair the boat, and fill it back up with their own and then set it back to sea to continue its journey with more students onboard as it goes.”

  KATU2 News interviewed Mr. Boken the following day and they aired this video. PLEASE NOTE: The footage in the video is not of the Neptune.

  The Columbian published the story on March 29, 2022 with an article titled, Wy’east Middle School students’ small boat Neptune recovered off Hawaii (By Griffin Reilly).

  PRESS RELEASE – Needle in the Haystack: Miniboat Neptune Arrives in Hawaii

  Click here: educationalpassages.org/needle-in-the-haystack-miniboat-neptune-arrives-in-hawaii

• September 2, 2022 - Cargo hold opened over virtual zoom