A student-led mission to send a self-captained sailboat from Newfoundland to Ireland appears to have failed, with the autonomous “sailbot” adrift somewhere in the North Atlantic.

The University of British Columbia team behind the five metre-long boat, named Ada, said the problem likely stems from the rudder. The vessel appears to have taken an abrupt turn south and is being aimlessly blown by wind about 800 kilometres from the nearest coast.

For the ambitious team of engineering students behind the boat, the rudder problems likely spell defeat.

“For now, Ada is truly on her own,” the team wrote in an update on Monday.

The project has since shifted from a trans-Atlantic journey to a recovery mission. The team is looking for a way to recover Ada, but it appears the closest ships are tankers and cargo ships that are hundreds of kilometres away.

“Previous boats that have attempted this trans-Atlantic voyage have been recovered: by the Canadian Navy, the Coast Guard, and fishing vessels,” the team wrote. “Ada isn’t near any of these types of vessels. She’s simply too far from the coast, and we think that these are the only types of vessels from which we can reasonably hope for assistance.”

The team is still able to track the “sailbot” because its satellite and electrical systems seem to be working. An online map following Ada’s journey is still live on Ada’s website, and the students will continue tracking nautical traffic daily in hopes of facilitating a rescue.

Despite the failure, the team said it was proud of how far their ship sailed.

“Ada has already set multiple records on this journey, sailing further east than any boat ever has autonomously crossed the Atlantic Ocean,” they wrote.

“Just launching Ada from St. John’s and seeing her so successfully sail those first 800 km has given our team the conviction that we really did accomplish something, and this failure is a great lesson for our team in our need to focus on iterative design, mechanical reliability of critical components, and component testing for future autonomous ocean-going boats!!”

The mission was sponsored by several different organizations and companies and was expected to take about eight weeks. If the mission was successful, Ada would have been the first autonomous boat to complete a trans-Atlantic voyage.