ADVENTURE ON THE HIGH SEAS

A record-breaking toy pirate ship launched by two young brothers from Scotland sailed the high seas to Scandinavia and onwards to Barbados before being lost at sea. A new toy ship has now been launched off the coast of Guyana to continue the transatlantic adventure.

Here’s how the adventure has unfolded so far…

VOYAGE 1 - HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Ollie Ferguson (now 11) and Harry (now 8) first launched their Playmobil ship from Peterhead at the end of May 2017. The boys had wanted to do a version of the classic sending a message in a bottle, and their parents came up with the idea of sending off a plastic Playmobil pirate ship instead.

The ship, named Adventure, needed some adaptations before it was ready to tackle the North Sea. A counterweight was added to help it stay upright and it was filled with polystyrene to help it stay afloat.

After trials in Tarlair open air swimming pool, they took it to the coast and launched it into the waves.  It carried a message asking anyone who found the boat to return it to the sea after recording where they found it.

It travelled 390 miles to Denmark where it was picked up by a family, who contacted the Fergusons via Facebook with photos of them with the boat before returning it to the sea. From there, it travelled to Sweden where it found its way into a tree, found by a woman in her boat who did some running repairs before setting it off on yet another voyage, this time to Norway.

The story attracted interest from media all over the world and they boys have enjoyed a few brief moments of celebrity status, with tv appearances and radio interviews.

VOYAGE 2 - ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

Following the media frenzy the family were approached by the Christian Radich, a Norwegian full-rigged ship, who offered to carry Adventure out of the North Sea to explore new waters.

The Christian Radich carried Adventure 3,000 miles south to the southern Atlantic Ocean. They undertook running repairs and replaced the sails and rigging damaged in the North sea crossing. The actual repairs were undertaken by crew members that had helped restore the Cutty Sark, so she was in capable hands!

They released it 100 miles of the coast of Mauritania, the goal was for it to make it across the Atlantic west to the Americas. Predictive technology specialists, OPEX Group, kindly sponsored a GPS tracker so we could follow Adventure on this stage of its journey.  Working with the teams at YB Tracking and DDK Positioning the tracker pinged coordinate data once a day via satellite allowing us to track the ship as it made its way unassisted westwards.

Following an epic ocean voyage the little boat ended up 30 km off the coast of Barbados before her tracker finally died. The record-breaking ‘most travelled toy ship’ covered 6,072.47km (3,773.26 miles). The story received worldwide media attention and was followed by millions of people around the world. You can view of Guinness World Record here.

VOYAGE 3 - THE NEXT CHAPTER…

The original plan was to have Adventure picked up, the tracker battery recharged, then put back to sea. Perhaps she would continue her voyage by catching the Gulf stream West to East back across the Atlantic. We wanted to continue the adventure, however until the original boat showed up on some distant shore then the journey was over.

A new opportunity to continue on our adventure presented itself last year. The Lewis family from Trinidad contacted us and asked if they could help in some way with the project. We discussed the possibility of doing Adventure 2 and we felt that getting his boys involved in the build would be a great way to share the experience.

The boys are called Jax (7), Kai (10) and Fynn (3). We set up video conferencing during Lockdown and Ollie and Harry shared their engineering experience from the first boat. We sent a second Playmobil ship (the same model) out to the Lewis family who then rebuilt Adventure2 in exactly the same way that we had our first version.  

This ship has the same tracker as before that was kindly donated by the Caribbean Oceanography Aquaculture & Subsea Technology Foundation (COAST). Keith is a co-founder and director of this education foundation, its focus is the scientific exploration of deep water in the oceans surrounding the Caribbean.

Keith works offshore and launched Adventure 2 (A2) from the Offshore Support vessel: Normand Installer, 60 miles off the coast of Guyana. Adventure2 went back in the water less than 100 miles from her original course. This was on the same track of the original Adventure (A1). The little boat A2 sailed west across the Caribbean sea for a number of weeks. In that time she was hit by two hurricanes and was at the epicentre of an earthquake that rocked the nearby island of Trinidad. Eventually after another storm, the tracker showed she had run aground in the jungle lagoons of Honduras near Brus Laguna. She had already travelled 4,000km!

Here she was picked up by shark fishermen and taken back to their village. What followed was a protracted negotiation with various people, officials from the community and other parties. Eventually we gave her up as lost as we weren't prepared to meet the demands for her safe return, despite the boys offering to send gifts to the children of the local community. At this point the Honduran Navy intervened and commandeered A2 on our behalf.

The little boat was then whisked off the Honduran mainland to the tiny paradise island of Guanaja. Here friends of the family - Roland Rumm, his wife Julia and their son Santi (5), repaired the damage caused by her ordeal and re-rigged her ready for the next part of the voyage. They released A2 10 miles north of Guanaja. From here A2 bobbed westwards for over a week towards Belize. Concerned locals aware of the dangers of the local reefs launched a rescue mission by power boat to go and pick A2 up before she was damaged. The onboard tracker enabled a swift water rescue and she was returned to the shores of San Pedro, Ambergris Caye. The local community were delighted with the story of the little boat and spent a week with the tiny vessel showing her round their island and meeting lots of locals. Cindy and Andy (Belize Sailing Center) and their daughter Oceane (8), helped with friends Lara and Laurie took great care of the little boat. Ollie and Harry even joined in a zoom school lesson with the local school.

There was concern for the boat’s progress north towards the Yucutan Pennisula in Mexico. This would only be possible with some modifications to the hull. So the sails were removed and an aluminium cross keel was added to ensure that currents took hold of the boat rather than the winds that would push her onshore. Water trials of the new keel were rudely interrupted by an angry crocodile that attacked A2, thankfully she was unharmed, dispute being thrown out of the water.

After a brief flight off the island to Belize City, A2 was taken aboard a catamaran which headed up the coast to Cancun carrying Adventure 2. Brian and Kiiki from Sailing Lost, agreed to drop her in the fast currents to the north and these currents took her through the Yucatan Channel at incredible speeds of up to 5 knots, around the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico, and then along the Cuban coast to finally be picked up off Miami. Just before pick-up in Miami, Adventure 2 surpassed the success of the first boat and earnt the boys a new world record for “Most travelled Toy Ship” - breaking their own world record!

You can keep up to date with Adventure's current location using the map on the home page.

Visit our picture gallery to see images of the Adventure.

COMING SOON: PROJECT EREBUS - our more ambitious adventure yet!

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS FOR MAKING IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO TRACK OUR ADVENTURE!