By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews
Daniel Roeser admits there may have been a time or two this summer when his work helping assemble a five-foot-long autonomous miniboat felt a bit like drudgery
Take, for instance, the long hours needed to sand the vessel’s fiberglass hull for eventual launch into the Pacific Ocean. In those moments, said Roeser, a 17-year-old Toledo High School senior, there was little to show but piles of dust.
“But at the end of every day, I’d remind myself that I’m building a tiny unmanned research boat that will transmit important data for years,” he told YachatsNews. “So, really, the end goal definitely outweighed any annoying tasks.”
The officially named RSV Yaquina Neversink – its ocean-going progress can be tracked here in real time — was produced by one of the many summer learning experiences offered this year. The experiences involve a partnership with the Lincoln County School District and various local organizations, all made possible by substantial state funding.
The miniboat program attracted about a dozen students from several Lincoln County high schools and was run by Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Oregon Coast STEM Hub.
“The idea was to have these kids spend afternoons for two weeks to build a boat from a kit,” said Kama Almasi, the STEM Hub’s director. “It turned out to be a really cool project that we think taught the students a lot about the marine environment.”
The idea to build a miniboat came from Tracy Crews, the Yachats resident who serves as Oregon Sea Grant’s associate director of education. She also helped launch and lead the Oregon Coast STEM Hub, which is one of 13 state-funded partnerships aimed at increasing students’ skills in science, technology, engineering and math.
“We first did this about nine years ago, when the boat kits were an awful lot more basic,” Crews said. “But this was an exciting project. The students were really engaged and committed and seemed to really enjoy each other and the process.”
The ultimate goal was for Roeser and engineering volunteer/mentor Rick Peters to help launch the finished product from an OSU research vessel. However, high winds and tides ended up scrubbing that mission. Instead, the actual launch took place Sept. 21, 150 miles offshore from the Bell M Shimada, a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.
The Neversink
But first, there were all those tasks that could sometimes feel a bit tedious.
The boat’s fiberglass keel, for instance, needed ballasting and attaching. Its keel, as Roeser will tell you, required hours of sanding. Three coats of “anti-fouling” paint were applied to help the Neversink weather the punishing marine environment.
Finally, students attached the small mast that allows the Neversink to ride the wind wherever it takes it.
Peters, a retired robotics engineering instructor and accomplished woodworker who lives in Yachats, got involved because he wanted to volunteer at the Hatfield center. After going through the center’s volunteer orientation, he learned from Crews just days later that a miniboat kit, replete with GPS transmitter and sensors measuring air temperature, water temperature and orientation, needed building.
“It was pretty opportune for everybody,” Peters said.
He and Roeser ended up as the technical team overseeing placement of the electronic sensors. As a bonus, the two of them did catch a recent ride on an OSU research vessel charged with collecting core samples surrounding the university’s PacWave open ocean testing facility off Seal Rock.
“He’s a real salt,” the self-described “ex-Navy guy” Peters said of Roeser. “Never got sick at all.”
In the two months the Neversink has been at sea it wandered south along the West Coast, then turned west, began moving swiftly and Friday was just five nautical miles off the coast of the big island of Hawai’i. Almasi was rushing to make plans to try to recover the vessel with the help of teachers near Hilo.
A minboat fleet
The Neversink’s kit and additional sensor package cost about $7,500 and purchased from Educational Passages, a non-profit based in Northwood, N.H. The boat is one of 25 launched by high school students around the country this summer and joins 211 other boats that have been launched since 2008.
The continuous stream of data produced by that veritable fleet of miniboats is used regularly by ocean researchers monitoring water and air temperatures and seeking to better understand wave patterns, said Cassie Stymiest, the organization’s executive director.
“We always remind people that this isn’t just a cool little after-school project,” she said. “It’s a really intensive learning experience that has touched hundreds and hundreds of students over the years.”
As important as the launching might be the hoped-for eventual recovery of the boats, she said. Notes placed in the crafts’ hulls advise that it be taken to the nearest high school wherever the boat washes ashore.
Also included are instructions on how the boats can be refurbished for re-launch, as well as contact information for the student group that dropped the boat into the ocean in the first place.
To date, miniboats launched in the Pacific have turned up in Hawaii and such far-flung places as the Marshall and Solomon Islands, Stymiest said.
And when a miniboat launched several years ago by four students in Newfoundland washed up in Ireland, the students boarded a plane to retrieve the boat personally.
“The scientific and cultural connections involved in these programs can be really profound,” she said. “And, as for the boats, they can end up sending back data for years and years.”
Back in Yachats, Peters puts it another way.
“These miniboats are really a message in a bottle for other kids to get interested in science,” he said. “That’s really what we’re all looking for here.”
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
What a fantastic and engaging project. Nice article, Dana.