There is a pirate boat at sea and it is heading for the Caribbean.
But rather than being hunted down, excited ship spotters are eagerly tracking its progress.
The Adventure2 is a plastic Playmobil pirate ship model.
Launched from the offshore support vessel Normand Installer off the coast of Guyana this month, mini Adventure2 was put in the water by offshore worker Keith Lewis on behalf of sons Jax, 7, Kai, 10, and Fynn, 3.
The toy ship’s journey was inspired by the voyages of an earlier sistership model, which was launched by brothers Ollie, now 11, and Harry, 8, Ferguson from Peterhead on Scotland’s east coast in 2017.
The Adventure, carrying a message asking those who found it to return the toy ship to sea and record where they found it, bravely made it across the North Sea to Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where it was logged — and even in one case repaired — before being relaunched again.
Atlantic adventure
Its antics received some serious media coverage. This resulted in the crew of Norway’s historic rigged sailing ship Christian Radich — also home to TradeWinds' parties for Nor-Shipping week — taking the Adventure to the south Atlantic and relaunching the tiny craft off the coast of Mauritania.
Defying all odds, the model ship, which had been fitted with counterweights to help it stay upright, filled with polystyrene for buoyancy and equipped with a tiny GPS tracker, covered more than 3,773 miles (6,000 km), earning it a Guinness World Record.
Collaboration
The vessel's final signal put it just off the coast of Barbados before the tracker died.
It seemed like all had gone quiet until the Trinidad-based Lewis family got in touch with the Fergusons last year and their lockdown project became the Adventure2.
The Ferguson duo, who are undertaking a series of 500 adventures, which they aim to complete before they turn 18, shared engineering tips via video calls and the family sent out a second Playmobil ship kit to the Lewis team.
The Adventure2 was fitted with a tracker and the hope is it will 'sail' towards Trinidad, into the Caribbean Sea and catch the Gulf Stream to head back across the Atlantic to the UK.
Track its voyage live here: https://yb.tl/a
