I’ve been doing it for over sixty years, and had always hoped to find “a bottle with a message inside” from a faraway land. I had dropped a few in the ocean around Catalina Island, California, in the 70’s, but had never heard back. Maybe my drift bottles were still floating around in the vast ocean or they had busted up on some rocks around Alaska or Macau.
On Saturday, I hit the bottle jackpot at Laulau Beach. I found three bottles with notes inside. One was still floating in the water, and two had washed on shore during high tide. For a long-time beachcomber, this was an exciting find — a personal first.
Each tightly corked bottle had a note inside. The wine bottles were not eroded or covered with sea crust, so I assumed they hadn’t been in the water long. It was twilight, so I took the bottles home and right away, family members were guessing the bottles were sent by a stranded traveler/lover after a shipwreck, or the bottles had just come from Tinian or had been floating around Saipan for a few days, or the bottles might have a map to a buried treasure.
Drats! It was nothing of the kind — no story of a stranded lover or a clue about a buried treasure. But it was educational.
We took a few photos, and then got the notes out of the bottles. The bottles had been a school project by George Washington High School students out of Hagåtña, Guam, and had been dropped in the ocean on Sept. 11, 2010.
The purpose of the project was to study the ocean currents, and it appeared that it took 14 days for the drift bottles to reach Saipan from Guam.
Instructions were in the bottle on how to return the information about the currents, which we did; students Gerard Chargualaf, Ricky Meeks and Shaun Avellana will be happy to get the news back about their project.
It appears that I’ll have to continue my search for a bottle with a dramatic note inside or maybe a genie in the bottle. These are good reasons to take another beach walk.
The writer is the author of “Moon Over Manila.” Check his website at http://www.josephrace.com.
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