Adventure on the high seas for Turriff world record holders
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Turriff brothers Ollie and Harry Ferguson whose adventures have gained global media attention are once again setting forth on the high seas.
Their toy sailing ship Adventure travelled across both the North Sea and the Atlantic ocean and in October last year, they were presented with a Guiness World Record for the longest distance travelled at sea by a toy boat.
With Adventure's tracker shutting down off the coast of Barbados, the original ship has, as yet, still to be found.
Undaunted, the pair have worked on the creation of Adventure 2 which has headed out to sea on the Normand Installer an offshore support vessel for her maiden voyage.
As dad Mac Fergusson explained: "She is currently located east of Trinidad and we are almost back on our adventure.
"The currents look good and she has been fitted out to the exact same spec as our first boat.
"Our thanks go to the Lewis family for their amazing efforts in helping us achieve this.
"The tracker will be turned on as she goes in the water which will give us a good six months of tracking her again before we need to worry about batteries."
A live tracker update will be available on https://www.facebook.com/tdajp/ when the vessel is officially launched.
Several years ago Ollie and Harry's parents created a list of achievable adventures for the two youngsters, which in turn quickly grew to have five hundred in total.
This has included everything from having a bath outdoors, constructing a giant catapult, sending a LEGO figure into space and mummifying a fish through to hunting for meteorites eating Surstomming and even setting up their own independent country, the Kingdom of Ce.
But it was the quest to launch a toy boat at sea that catapulted them to worldwide acclaim.
In May 2017, the boys with some parental help used a Playmobil pirate ship which they named Adventure to undertake the task on their list.
Making it watertight the boat was launched near Peterhead containing a message in a bottle with contact details for the boys.
It duly made its way across the North Sea, being found by a couple on the north-west coast of Jutland, near Hanstholm after a 390 mile crossing.
After relaunch it turned up in a tree on the Swedish coastline, where the finder also contacted the boys and carried out small repairs before relaunching the boat on its' travels before being potted of the coast of southern Norway by a conservation vessel, where crew member Haakon Braathu Haaverstad of the National Conservation Authority found it near Vesteroy.
After the story was picked up by the Norwegian press, national papers in the UK and even international yachting news releases, a new offer of an adventure beyond Scandinavia was on offer.
Captain Clas Jagdum, master of the internationally renowned Norwegian three masted sailing ship the Christian Radich which is a regular participant in the Tall Ships races and appeared on BBC TV in the 1970s in the Ondein Line offered to take the vessel on its next voyage which saw it headed out for the Cape Verde islands.
In December 2017 the boat was launched off the coast off the coast of Mauritania spending many weeks travelling westwards across the Atlantic, almost making landfall on the northern coast area of South America before tidal currents drove it north towards Bardados.
Despite local efforts, the failure of the battery in the tracker meant that, to date the last known position was off the coast of Barbados, with landfall unconfirmed.
A replica of the original vessel has been on display at Peterhead museum and the plastic boat, the Adventure was confirmed as a new World Record holder, making its entry in the 2020 edition.
The citation reads: “A Playmobil Pirate ship, the Adventure travelled 6072.47km (3773.28miles) between May 2017 and May 2018.
“Brothers Ollie and Harry Fergusson launched their toy from near Peterhead and sea currents carried it to Scandinavia.
“The Norwegian ship Christian Radich picked it up and released it 160km off the coast of Mauritania where it continued its journey across the Atlantic to near Barbados.”
