Little Boat That Could Laden With Notes From Finders, Vessel Continues Trip To Sea

Wed., Dec. 23, 1998

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

This is the latest port of call for a little wooden boat that a group of Yaak, Mont., schoolchildren launched on a goodwill voyage in 1994.

With a little help from friends, the homemade boat has made its way down the Yaak River, the Kootenai (or Kootenay, as it is known in British Columbia) and now is part way down the Columbia.

Allen Burkhart found the boat recently in a big pile of driftwood and other debris he and other Columbia Navigation tugboat employees fished out of Lake Roosevelt near China Bend, about 15 miles north of Kettle Falls.

The company has a federal contract to remove debris from reservoirs and grind it so it doesn’t accumulate at dams.

Inside some waterproof tubes, Burkhart found a photograph of Mrs. Haggerty’s smiling class of kindergartners through fourth-graders and a note asking finders to help the little craft make its way to the sea.

The children had read a book about a canoe launched on a similar journey.

Other children have added their good wishes to the Yaak students’ project.

“I am 7,” Brad Armstrong wrote in June 1996 before relaunching the boat near Castlegar, British Columbia.

Being in first grade was fun, he said, adding, “If you aren’t in grade one, you should be in it.”

Other finders also have added notes as well as a few embellishments to the humble, hand-carved log boat, with an angle-iron weight to keep it upright. Someone gave it a new nameplate, and children at the Nelson Waldorf School repainted it before putting it back in the water near Castlegar in October 1997.

Northport Elementary student Galen Wright showed the boat to his first-grade class before sending it on its way again.

Burkhart’s co-worker, Mike Potestio, gave the boat to his wife, who is a Kettle Falls Elementary teacher, so her class could add a note.

Now the Columbia Navigation workers plan to add another waterproof tube and a note of their own before relaunching the boat below McNary Dam at Umatilla, Ore. They fear it would be ground up by the turbines of Grand Coulee or one of the other dams between here and there.

They figure the boat has a better chance of getting through the three dams below McNary, which all have locks.

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