The Killer Whale

Brien McMahon High School, Norwalk, Connecticut USA

Updates:

Voyage 1

  • About Us

    We are sophomores at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk, Connecticut. We have experience building an ROV with our teacher Mr. LaPrad, and now are building our own miniboat, The Killer Whale. We named our boat after its coloration: its hull is painted black with some parts left white. This is different from our sister-ship M/B Booyah (built by another group of students) that is painted red.

    During our project we have been learning the basics of naval architecture and all the components that go into making a boat fast and withstand the elements when faced out in the ocean. We hope our miniboat travels anywhere on the other side of the Atlantic. Our goal is for her to land in an area that we would be able to connect with others and recover it from later on!

  • May 2026: The M/V Bermuda Islander Connection

    On May 18th, we took a field trip down to the The Bermuda International Shipping Company in Salem, New Jersey to tour the M/V Bermuda Islander. This is the cargo ship who will be deploying our miniboat! Our team’s boat, The Killer Whale (black and white), is pictured on the left with our sister boat, Boo-yah (red), on the right.

    The next day on May 19, the two miniboats were launched together on the east side of the Gulf Stream. Thank you to the captain and crew of Bermuda Islander (BI) for setting another adventure out to sea for us all. This double launch marks BI‘s 19th and 20th miniboat deployment for Educational Passages, officially marking them the vessel with the most miniboat deployments of any other! Read more about all 20 deployments in our blog post: “Miniboats Launched by the M/V Bermuda Islander.”

    Sensor Data

    The boat has two tracking systems: 1. The main GPS reports to the map above, and 2. A student-installed secondary GPS tracks location, air and water temperature, orientation, and even has a camera, with the map below showing only the last 7 days of sensor data. Contact us for more information or access to the full dataset.


    Her onboard camera has been capturing her journey at sea so far:

    Stay tuned for more updates!