Teacher Lisa Swanson Updates Community on 6th Grade Sailboat Project

While she is on sabbatical this semester, Middle School geography teacher Lisa Swanson has been venturing to some locations where the 6^th Grade sailboats have landed over the past 11 years with the overarching goal of establishing MBS as part of the All-Atlantic Blue Schools Network. So far, she has been delivering regular updates to MBS Middle School students from locations including Nantucket, Massachusetts and Nags Head, North Carolina.

She is currently in North Carolina, where she helped coordinate the relaunch of this year’s 6^th Grade sailboat, Crimson Cyclone, with help from a local fisherman who heads out to the Gulf Stream regularly with a team of scientists to tag bluefin tuna. 

“The captain invited me to join the research team, watch the tagging, and help launch Crimson Cyclone,” said Ms. Swanson. 

The boat was originally launched on Christmas Eve, but winds pushed it back to shore quickly and it landed at Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina just a few days later. 

Getting Crimson Cyclone back out on the water has not been an easy task. Ms. Swanson reported that the plans for relaunch were postponed for several weeks due to poor weather and strong winds. In the interim, however, students were able to email their questions to the captain about the Gulf Stream, the bluefin tagging program, ocean sustainability, and more.

Late on Thursday evening, February 22, Ms. Swanson and the team returned to the dock after a long day on the water, tagging tuna and eventually launching Crimson Cyclone into the Gulf Stream. You may follow the boat’s progress here.  

Ms. Swanson began her sabbatical by traveling to Nantucket, where she visited the intermediate school science classroom hosting last year’s mini boats. “As you may recall, we launched our boat, Crimson Tide, along with Crimson Current, which the Barryroe School in Ireland adopted. They renamed it ‘Renault na Mara,’ meaning ‘Star of the Sea,’” said Ms. Swanson.

Both mini boats will be relaunched soon with help from a scallop fisherman who is heading to the continental shelf later this week.  “Let the race across that Atlantic begin!”

For the past 11 years, MBS has launched a 5-foot unmanned sailboat as part of the “Educational Passages” program. Each boat is equipped with a GPS that transmits to a satellite, so the students will be able to track its journey on their iPads. In its hull, students place a variety of items that illustrate their lives in New Jersey — essays, baseballs, an MBS cap, a USA jersey, and issues of Crimson magazine. 

The first MBS boat — Crimson Tide – was launched in December of 2012 and was recovered by a fisherman in Guernsey, an island in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy. It was later re-launched and washed ashore in France. Other MBS boats have traveled to Spain, Florida, the Shetland Islands, and the Orkney Islands in Northern Scotland. 

The Educational Passages program was created by a sailor from Maine who wanted to educate youngsters about ocean winds and currents. The program caught the attention of former MBS trustee and parent Joe Robillard, who introduced it to MBS. Mrs. Swanson says the project is exciting because it provides a backdrop to teach everything from physics to world languages. 

A significant aspect of the project hinges on the hope that students can connect with their peers across the globe when the boat reaches a foreign shore. When Crimson Tide was retrieved off the coast of Guernsey, for example, it set up exciting new learning opportunities as MBS students connected with students there via skype.