Why do we LOVE miniboats?

Season 4 of the Educational Passages Podcast continues with our “Imagine This” series - Where the magic of miniboats come alive through the voices and visions of those who make it all possible.

Each episode will paint a vivid picture of discovery, connection, and curiosity — not just tracking the voyages, but exploring the challenges and unexpected outcomes behind them. 

Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this:

Since it's February, we’re talking about love — why we LOVE miniboats! Not just because they carry love letters to the world, but we will share some of the extraordinary true moments they've brought us—serendipity in Nantucket, a wedding-day connection in Australia, and the unforgettable journey of the Rye Riptides: A classroom in the middle of a pandemic launches a miniboat into the Gulf Stream. Students track it for months as the world feels uncertain and disconnected. What happens isn’t just a remarkable ocean crossing, but a powerful reminder that curiosity can anchor us, stewardship can unite us, and even the smallest boat can carry connection, resilience, and love across an entire ocean basin.

Visit https://educationalpassages.org/support to make a gift which helps these stories continue, and visit https://educationalpassages.org/boats/ryeriptides/ to see pictures and the full story of the Rye Riptides that was featured in this episode.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:55 Why do we love miniboats?
• 4:27 Reminders of love
• 5:19 Stewardship: The Rye Riptides Story
• 10:10 Show us some love

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Welcome to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences. I'm your host, Cassie Stymist. Welcome everybody to Season 4. Get ready to set sail on a brand new adventure as we launch our Imagine This series, where the magic of mini boats come alive through the voices and visions of those who make it all possible. In this series, each episode will paint a vivid picture of discovery, connection, and curiosity, not just tracking the voyages, but exploring the challenges and unexpected outcomes behind them. Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this. It's February, so time for an episode all about love. At our board meeting this week, we did an activity that included filling in the sentence, I love educational passages because we stand for, and the answers included human connection, ocean literacy, exploration, inspiring curiosity, educators in science, real science and connections. Let's dive into that further. Not just why we love educational passages, but why do we love mini boats? And how do they bring love into our lives in unexpected, lasting ways? When we talk about love, we usually think about romance, or family or close friends. But love can also be quieter than that. Love can be care, it can be showing up, it can be paying attention. Sometimes it looks like curiosity. Sometimes it looks like connection. That kind of love sits at the heart of every mini boat journey. Imagine this. A small, specially crafted boat about a meter and a half long rests in your hands. Inside, tucked safely away is a letter, a message meant for someone you've never met, a love letter to the world. You don't know where it will go, you don't know who will find it. You only know that once it touches the water, it will follow the wind and currents, writing its own story across the ocean as it sails. And somehow, again and again, those letters in the boats find their way to people. To fishermen finding them at sea, like the stormy Normie, who tag it with a sticker and send it back out. To researchers in Portugal who are studying how things move in the ocean, finding the charger. To an eight year old in Ireland discovering a boat named Lancer in her backyard that came from the US. To a beach in the UK where you grew up. To families walking along the shore, sandy beaches and rocky coasts. What is a strange object with student drawings all over it, they wonder? Like the Westman family from South Carolina who were vacationing in Nantucket, Massachusetts when they discovered the Griffin Cruiser on the beach, a mini boat that was actually from a school near where they live. To a primary school teacher playing catch with her dog on the beach in Australia that finds a mini boat all the way from Massachusetts, via cargo ship and then launched by a research ship, that is. As if it were meant to be. It's the Sacred Heart Star of the Sea. She reads the name on the deck and her jaw drops, as nearly thirty years before she and her husband were married at the Star of the Sea Church nearby. To a school in France that takes the crimson tide, repairs it, and mails it back to your school just in time for middle school graduation. You were in sixth grade when the project started. Seriously, these are all actual examples. In classrooms around the world, students pour real love into these boats. Every student involved leaves something inside it, a thought, a hope, a sense of pride. They name the boats after school mascots, after local wildlife, and after friends who have passed away. With words like hope, explorer, voyager. Those names stick. They become part of the boat's identity and part of the student's identity too. Something symbolic and something very real. This is love as collaboration, love as a shared purpose. Sometimes the connections even turn into love, friendships, partnerships, relationships, and sometimes they send a serendipitous reminder of love, like for the captain of the Griffin Cruiser. After its first voyage that sent it only one state away, it finally started riding the Gulf Stream, but only for a month. Unexpectedly, it comes out of the Gulf Stream and keeps going north instead of east, towards Nantucket. Not only is it found by the family I mentioned before, who were from the same town where it started, but when it landed, the teacher just couldn't believe it. That's because it landed during the very same weekend that she was in California with her husband, celebrating their thirty fifth wedding anniversary. Where did they honeymoon all those years ago? Yep, Nantucket. Seriously, these are all true stories. Miniboats also teach a deeper kind of love stewardship. Students learn that launching a boat isn't just about sending something out into the world, it's about understanding impact. Lessons dive into ocean currents, climate patterns, and marine debris. This is love that turns into action. Here's an example the Rye Riptides. Imagine this. You're a fifth grader in 2020. You just finished building a mini boat with your classmates. Decorating it is next, but you're sent home and can't return. The world feels uncertain, school looks different, life looks different, you adapt. You make a drawing for the deck of your boat and mail it to educational passages. They print out all the drawings from your classmates and epoxy them to the deck. You zoom with them and get to see the work. You talk about next steps. How will you launch it? There are no ships going out, people can't even get together. Summer comes and goes, and a new school year begins. You're now in sixth grade and it's even more different than before. A new set of fifth graders come on board the project, adding their own things to the cargo hold. A mask signed by all the students, maple leaves to represent fall in New England, and stake quarters to share with the finder. During school one day, your teacher gets a call. They found a deployer for your mini boat, but it has to get down to Woods Hole, ASAP. So your teacher drives it down, mask and all. She meets the crew of the SV Corps with Kramer, the ship that will launch the boat. The crew, a group of students studying oceanography and the Gulf Stream, quarantine for a bit before they set out to sea. Your mini boat is on board. It's October. You send messages to the crew. How do you get drinking water? What is life like out at sea? They write back. You learn about what it takes and how long to get to the Gulf Stream. They launch your mini boat along with another into the ocean. Hurrah! Finally. Every day you track it. They track it. Everyone is seeing where it goes. You check the map. You watch the dots move. You talk about it with classmates, even when you can't get together in the same room. It becomes something steady, something to look forward to. A small adventure unfolding in real time while everything else feels upside down. Days turn into months. In August the following year, the GPS started reporting only occasionally. The signal fades in and out, but you keep tracking, you keep predicting. It goes silent in September. Nothing in October, one year after it was launched. If the winds keep blowing, if the currents keep carrying it, where could it be? You don't lose hope. You know it's still out there, but no signal in November either or December. Then, at the end of January 2022, after four hundred and sixty two days at sea, four hundred and sixty two days of tracking it, the mini boat reports again from an island in Norway, an entire ocean basin away. A student there finds it and brings it to his school the very next day. The story spreads fast. Media outlets in Norway pick it up, then American news, local channels at first, then CNN, NPR, and even NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. Suddenly, your small classroom project is being shared with the entire world. You and your classmates are interviewed what seems like a hundred times, and maybe that's what it was, it was a media blitz at the time. The weight of the pandemic had lifted, and the light shining through was your little boat being found in Norway. People said this is the stuff I love to read about, and I just love this story. Suddenly, the world loved mini boats too. The teacher called it the little boat that could, reflecting on how it survived the isolation of the pandemic, found the Gulf Stream, and provided an education. It gave strangers a way to connect. But that's not even the best part. The best part comes later. A small little gathering of two classrooms on a Zoom call, thousands of miles apart. You meet the students who found your boat. They share their story and their interests. You do the same. You talk, you laugh, you realize that even with an ocean between you, you play the same sports. You like the same video games. You're not so different after all. In that moment, the mini boat isn't just a science project anymore. It's connection, it's stewardship, it's love. That's the Rhyribides. That's why we love mini boats. And sometimes, every once in a while, the ocean even sends a little love back, a looping GPS track that almost impossibly traces the shape of a heart across the sea. Feel like showing us some love in return? Please consider making a donation to support our mission and work. You have been listening to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization. Please consider making a donation to help us continue our work bringing people together to learn more about the ocean. To donate, head over to educationalpassages.org slash support. If you're enjoying this program, please consider subscribing to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, or from wherever you download your podcasts. Thanks for listening to the case.