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Bluefish is sponsored by the Waldo County YMCA and Troy Howard Middle School of Belfast. Brandon Hurd may be reached at teens@waldocountyymca.org to learn more about either of these organizations.
Bluefish was launched from the MMA Training Ship State of Maine (TSSOM) on May 22 approximately 250 nautical miles east of Charleston/Savannah: Latitude 32° 51.3 North, Longitude 74° 19.6 West. CAPT Larry Wade and the TSSOM crew and cadets placed the following items in Bluefish's storage container: 2008 Training Cruise Challenge Coin, MMA Decal, U.S. Flag Decal, and 7 coins from various countries visited by the TSSOM. CAPT Wade reported that shortly after launching Bluefish "was sailing 'smartly' downwind towards the Northwest."
Four days after launch, Bluefish mysteriously stopped reporting her position to iBOATtrack.com for a period of 45 hours (from 4 PM EDT on May 26 to 1 PM EDT on May 28). Then, just as mysteriously, position reports were again received, beginning 37 miles south-southwest of her last reported position. These reports continued for another 45 hours while Bluefish traveled another 235 miles northeast to a position 190 miles east of Assateague Light on the southern end of Assateague Island on Virginia's eastern shore.
At that time, the last position report was received from Bluefish at 10 PM EDT on May 31. iBOATtrack.com continued to try to track Bluefish until Monday, June 15 when tracking was discontinued. We do not believe Bluefish to have been sunk, and hope to hear from her in the future. Rather, we believe that the GPS transmitter aboard Bluefish to have failed permanently. iBOATtrack.com assures Educational Passages that such an event is extremely rare, with their units being extremely reliable with only a 2-3% failure rate when analyzed. During the nine days that Bluefish was tracked by iBOATtrack.com, she traveled a total of 363 miles N-NW.
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