Message in a Bottle: What We Cannot Know

Note the red flame of warm current and the large eddies where the
Gulf Stream stretches into the colder (yellow and green) North Atlantic.

Thanks to our good friends on S/V Celebration, our message bottle is floating dozens of miles off the east coast of the US. It will float along at one to three knots as the Gulf Stream carries it north and east until the Gulf Stream sputters and splits off the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland unless diverted by one of the stream's huge eddies. We do not know that it will follow that course, but the odds are good. Beyond the end of the Gulf Stream, we cannot guess what current or currents, what forces of wind or wave might tow it along. What our bottle will float among, pass by, be seen or sensed by, bumped or tasted by, we do not know. Who or what might see it without knowing its significance, like a face in a crowd, we cannot know. It is a bottle, flotsam. It is a wine bottle of which the planet empties and discards tens of thousands every day, meaningless except to those who drank from them.

The full circulation of Gulf Stream from Florida towards Europe.
Once the current reaches the British Isles, it assumes other names.

A message in a bottle is a mysterious delight for those who send them into the ocean wilds. No one else even considers the possible existence of any single bottle. The two classes of people curious about the bottle are the ones who cast them adrift and the ones who find them. And then, the finders only care if they choose to pick up the bottle instead of passing it as common beach garbage. A conscientious beach walker may retrieve the bottle only to toss it into a trash bin. The bottle could land on beaches as disconnected as Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Russia, the west coasts of Europe or Africa. It could even float all the way back to the Caribbean.

It could be years or even decades before our bottle is found. It might never be. It might be smashed against a rocky shore, trapped in a crevice, crashed by the hull of a ship, snagged and discarded by a fishing trawler. It might be buried under beach sand before someone spies it. Of course, someone might find it and never let us know.

In 1914, Captain C. Hunter Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation released 1,889 bottles to test the Scottish currents. His experiment was an unusual use of bottles. He wanted to know where the bottom currents flowed. He wanted his bottles to "float" along the bottom. Of all the bottles released, 315 have been recovered and reported, the last in June of this year, 98 years since its release. It was recovered only nine miles from its original drop point, but we can imagine how far it may have circulated undersea over the course of nearly a century, bouncing along the bottom, witnessing inter alia the shipping and submarine activity of two world wars.

Capt Brown's bottle # 646B found in June 2012.

Scottish currents charted by Capt Brown's bottles.

In the end, there will be far more that we do not know about the voyage of our bottle than we can know. Two facts will be the likely total of our knowledge, where it began (known) and where the voyage ends.  We already have a good tale about the journey's start; any further tales surrounding the journey (e.g., who finds it and under what conditions) will provide icing on the proverbial cake. Captain Brown's bottles included a prepaid postcard and offered six pence to the finder. Perhaps we should have included a monetary reward for replying to our bottle? I believe that far too cynical for what is an enduringly romantic notion, that someone would cast a message in a bottle into one of our planet's great oceans just to see where it might land. A celebration of serendipity.

Royal terns at sunset.

NOTE:  For anyone cruising the remote Bahamas or passing through on the way to Puerto Rico and the Carib beyond, note that the Turks and Caicos National Museum (who'd have known they have one?) has a Message in  a Bottle collection on exhibit with messages found on its beaches.       http://tcmuseum.org/collections/

Message in a Bottle: The Tradition

A disorienting view of our bottle (too tall for Blogger). We inserted a page  with
"Message in this Bottle" written on it, just to be sure it was not mistaken for common beach garbage.

Love letters, castaways and, most mundane of all, mail. When Britain’s Royal Mail in 2008 admitted taking 31 years to deliver a missive penned by the Prince of Wales, a mere heir to the throne, a commentator for the Telegraph noted how much more efficient a message in a bottle would have been, one having been reported the same day as having traveled from Orkney to the beach at St Andrews in just 23 years.

It is not surprising that pilots, sailors and passengers on ships in distress might fling a message into the sea with the desperate hope of sending a few final words to family, friends and loved ones. As for the castaway theory, there have always been the practical obstacles, even assuming a good bottle has already washed onto the castaway’s beach, of writing materials and a way to seal the bottle so that it would be watertight, not to mention the vagaries of currents and weather that might delay the bottle’s arrival anywhere from ten, twenty or one hundred fifty years. (Note to modern mariners in distress: EPIRB (Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon) is a much more reliable means of alerting rescue agencies in event of shipwreck.)

Who knew there is such a long history of messages in bottles? I had thought it mostly a romantic and mythical notion with trivial practical overtones, like Capt Jack Sparrow escaping from the island on which he was marooned by lassoing a sea turtle with a rope braided from his own hair. Instead, we have a Greek philosopher-scientist, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Queen Elizabeth’s 16^th century Royal Navy availing themselves of the bottle technology. Theophrastus sought to prove that the Mediterranean Sea had been filled by Atlantic Ocean currents when he set bottles adrift in 310 BC. Christopher Columbus was a Great Pretender who claimed credit for discovering lands already occupied as well as previously discovered by Europeans, and he failed to find the East Indies for which expedition the Spanish royals paid. During the return from his first voyage, having already grounded his own flagship, he dropped a bottle in the ocean during a storm he feared might sink his remaining ship so that his discovery would be known as he claimed it. Columbus arrived back in Spain; his bottle did not. Last, but most sensible, Queen Elizabeth I, to protect her military intelligence from the accidental eyes of commoners, established the royal office of “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles.” The unwieldy title enabled the homely and chronically irritable queen to execute anyone who opened a bottle from the Queen’s Navy.

We could wonder why the seafaring empire that created the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to rescue its island subjects did not also establish a Castaway Communication Commission to read, review and evaluate all of the realm’s messages in a bottle. Lying near the delta terminus of the Gulf Stream, messages are surely drawn to Her Majesty’s shores as herrings to a shoal. Then again, local basking sharks might accidentally inhale the slow-floating bottles when vacuuming plankton.

Boreray, St Kilda, rising over 1200 ft from the sea.
 see http://www.stkilda.eu

St Kilda is a remote open ocean cluster of islands located forty miles west of North Uist, Outer Hebrides of Scotland, North Uist itself being quite remote. [see http://www.kilda.org.uk/]  Not named for any known saint, its appellation is likely the abuse of an old Norse place name meaning “sweet wellwater.” For more than two thousand years, the island was sparsely populated and rarely visited until its declining numbers resulted in a 1930 evacuation of all residents, except for the sheep of course. Currently a UNESCO World Heritage site, the archipelago boasts huge islets that jut abruptly from the sea, frosted by the guano of adorable puffins as well as stunning populations of gannets, petrels and fulmars. Ancient beehive shelters, stone cottages and stone walls stretch across the main island of Hirta in an arc above Village Bay.

The Street in The Village c. 1886

Because it was so difficult to access, and with an anchorage not well-protected from storms, residents created a novel means of communication, the St Kilda Mailboat. A letter was sealed in a tin of cocoa or similar container and attached to a small, rough wooden model of a boat. To be sure the message would float, the boat was buoyed with a sheep’s bladder, the sheep’s stomach and pluck having been reserved for a fine haggis, I presume. The “mailboats” fairly reliably landed on Scottish shores, but sometimes sailed to Norway.

Launching a St Kilda Mailboat. Note inflated sheep's bladder.

Such is the serendipity of messages in bottles. We thought it would be entertaining to put a message in a bottle; we did not appreciate or anticipate the tradition into which we had stepped. More later. [see next post for more on message bottles.]

Au revoir

The passing nor'easter soon after snow flurries over our marina yesterday.

Steve and Lynn on their Hallberg-Rassy ketch, Celebration, are dear friends that we have seen only twice in three years. We met them in 2010 when we were slip neighbors. They had been living on their boat for several years, and we learned a lot from them during the month and a half before they left for New England. Toward the end of summer, they sailed south, ultimately down through the Caribbean. 

But we never lost touch. Through their blog (link at right or http://sailcelebration.blogspot.com/) and periodic emails, we not only enjoyed the cruising life vicariously, we maintained a running conversation that, while very different from those friendly phone calls on land, was just as effective. Perhaps even better than the land equivalent as the periodic contacts were more special.

Celebration in a rare marina stop at WPM

They have written about the curiosities of cruising friendships where people meet and then go their separate ways, knowing they might connect at another port, but recognizing that they might never see each other face to face again. Ever. The transitory nature of the connection is a catalyst for carpe diem, spontaneous and frequent sundowners, potlucks and drinks in the drink. Anything postponed may be lost forever. Similarly our friendship with Brits Tony and Jenny on their Hans Christian Lowena who departed for the Caribbean late 2011 and will return home to Portugal in 2014; we might catch up with them then.

Thus, we celebrated one more final sundowner with several migrating cruisers, several new friends who rode out Hurricane Sandy with us -- Jeff and Katie on Mezzaluna, Bob and Monique on Last Waltz, Mark (because he and his Boston Terrier, Hank, have been with us all summer, he is no longer really a "new" friend, but he is also heading to the BVI) on Katkandu -- as well as Steve and Lynn along with Lynn's brother, Gary, on the eve of their departure into the wild blue yonder (the Atlantic Ocean) on the trailing edge of a nor'easter that they hope to ride east until pushed south by the next high pressure system. Destination: Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. We will miss them, but hope they will stumble across Tony and Jenny and count on a rendezvous with Chris and Anne on Mr Mac.

Mezzaluna from Wisconsin

Last Waltz from Canada

Katkandu from Belize and NYC

Chris and Anne are longtime friends of Steve and Lynn. We met Chris and Anne when they traveled through Oriental soon after Lynn and Steve had headed north in 2010. They joined us for Music Night, to which Steve and Lynn had introduced us. During their travels, Chris has published two more books with a third pending. We have not seen them since 2010, but follow their blog (see link at right or here http://sailmrmac.blogspot.com/), and Cameron follows them on Facebook.

Two Aussie friends, Keith and Jennifer on Jack's Back, slipped in for a couple of nights and a potluck this week before heading to St Augustine from where they will fly back to Australia. We will see them again next spring as they head north earlier than this year when they kept postponing their departure from Oriental, ultimately decorating and driving the marina van in the 4th of July parade.

For all of our sailing friends, we wish fair winds and calm seas. We will think of you often. We hope you will pass through next spring on your way back north bringing tales of adventure and romance. All of you are our connection to a life we planned years ago.

Celebration leaves for Beaufort Inlet, then Virgin Gorda

Update 11.11.12:
We asked Steve and Lynn if they would do us a favor during their voyage south: drop a Message in a Bottle into the Gulf Stream when they crossed. Generously, they agreed and later posted the drop in their blog.

"We dropped a Message in a Bottle in the gulf stream on friday night at 2310 for Jim, Beth and Cameron on Wild Haggis. Coordinates N33.56.628 W075.23.182. no pictures taken due to darkness."

Pictures? We are happy to have the coordinates. Thank you!

The bottle is a clear wine bottle with an Ecco Domani label. The wine was a gift from a cruising couple, Hunter and Julie, who had returned to land and were leaving Oriental for a new life in the Winston Salem area. Somewhat ironically, we met Hunter and Julie through Steve and Lynn who met Hunter and Julie when they walked past Celebration on Town Dock a little while before we were gathering there for sundowners. Very serendipitous.

The bottle holds a message with our contact information, an ONC sticker and two Wild Haggis silicon bracelets with the Matheson clan motto, Fac et Spera ("Do and Hope"). It could take six months or more for the bottle to reach a shore of the eastern Atlantic. And then someone must find it and decide to contact us. As it rides the Gulf Stream, we will hope no large shark takes an interest (they famously eat anything) and no large ship shatters the bottle with its truck-sized propellers. Of course, it could be washed ashore most anywhere between North Carolina and Europe, so the bottle's Gulf Stream passage will remain a mystery for several months if not longer.