Watch: World Record breaking Turriff toy ship rescued off the coast of Miami
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Turriff's own Adventure 2 which proved another record breaker at the weekend by beating the current world record held by its sister ship for the farthest distance travelled at sea by a toy boat has been rescued off the coast of Miami.
The toy sailing ship proved a record breaker once again for brothers Ollie and Harry Ferguson after it passed the landmark 6088km distance goal set by its predecessor.
Adventure 2 had been weaving its way carefully through the busy Florida Keys shipping lane at an average speed of 1.6 knots having already travelled round the Gulf of Mexico.
Over the past few days it has been working its way steadily towards the Miami coastline and an appeal was made for the ship to be collected before it was caught up in the Atlantic currents.
While still running its tracker on battery power, it is now planned to recharge the device and add additional solar powering to ensure that the ship can continue on its journey across the ocean in a bid to make it back to Scotland.
The latest adventure started off back in September off the coast of Guyana when the ship was launched by crew from the Normand Installer about 100km north of shoreline on the track of the original Adventure which was lost near Barbados.
From there it travelled for around 4000km westwards across the Caribbean Sea surviving two hurricanes and an undersea earthquake during its four-month odyssey.
Nearing Honduras in early December winds forced the vessel onto the shore in a remote lagoon in the Honduran jungle, and thus began a search to find her.
Thanks to the efforts of locals from Brus Lagoona, the boat was eventually located and handed in to officials in the Honduran Navy.
Following some repair work, the boat has been taken to Guanaja, an island visited by Columbus in 1502, where it was set on its way again.
Relaunched it then ended up in Belize where it was given a make-over with help from members of the Belize Sailing Centre including a hull modification.
Relaunched just north off the island of Cozumel on the Mexican coast it picked up the Loop Current which is a clockwise flow that extends northward into the Gulf of Mexico and joins the Yucatan Current and the Florida Current and flows as far north as Louisiana.
Despite some tense moments in the past few days where it was close to beaching in northern Cuba, the ship proved her worth and picked up the current again on Friday and has navigated its way through the incredibly busy Florida Keys shipping lanes to continue north-west towards the USA.
The young brothers previously set the world record for the longest distance travelled at sea by a toy boat with their Playmobil pirate ship called Adventure which sailed across the North Sea and the Atlantic to the Caribbean travelling 6072km between May 2017 and May 2018 but its tracker died off the coast of Barbados and it was lost at sea.
Updates are received from the ship’s tracker every six hours and can be followed at https://track-adventure.squarespace.com/
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