Message in a Bottle
As of today it has been exactly 10 years since I traversed Cape Horn aboard the yacht ‘TS Alye Parusa’.
It was markedly different from previous voyages. First of all, it was the first time I rounded Cape Horn with a team and with my son Oscar. Prior to that, I had always gone around Cape Horn solo.
1. Aboard the 36-foot yacht “Karaana” – December 1990.
2. Aboard the 60-foot yacht “Modern University for the Humanities” – 17 March 1999 during Around Alone (ex BOC) race.
3. Aboard the 85-foot yacht “TS Alye Parusa” – 9 April 2005 (a solo circumnavigation of the globe).
4. Aboard the 85-foot yacht “TS Alye Parusa” – 12 March 2008 (Antarctica Cup 2008).
5. Aboard the 85-foot yacht “TS Alye Parusa” – 12 February 2009 (team voyage from New Zealand).
In January 2009 we embarked from New Zealand (the port of Auckland) and set sail on a 6-thousand-mile course to the Falkland Islands via Cape Horn. The aim was to return the yacht “Alye Parusa” from the Southern Hemisphere to its home in the Northern Hemisphere (Falmouth, UK).
On 12 February 2009 we arrived safely at Cape Horn. The weather was favourable, and we slowed down the day before our arrival to see Cape Horn in the light of day. We passed the great Cape at a distance of 5 miles.
As is tradition, we drank some champagne and placed a message inside the bottle with the names of all of the members of the team. Some of us also put their business cards inside. We sealed the bottle and threw it into the sea near Cape Horn.
Later something entirely unexpected happened. 3 years ago, a letter bearing photographs of our bottle, covered in barnacles, arrived at the email addresses we had included in our message. It as follows:
«Hello,
Please find attached your message in a bottle found just off Beachport in South East Australia on 12th February 2012 by my father when he was diving for crayfish. He is 83 years old.
I have attached photos of your bottle and my father (Mick Jordan) at the place he found the bottle on the beach at Beachport. At this spot my father catches crayfish and abalone and has been for most of his adult life. It is also amazing also that the Champagne bottle you placed the note in was from the Jacobs Creek winery in «The Barossa Valley» here in South Australia only 4 hours drive from us. As well as the fact that it was exactly 3 years to the day that the bottle was found.
Can you please contact me and please translate if possible as we are having trouble with the translation. Looking forward to your response.
Kind Regards
Maryanne Jordan Clifford»
The bottle had crossed the Southern Atlantic and the Indian Oceans over three years, landing on a beach in South-East Australia near the town of Beachport (between Melbourne and Adelaide).
Our friend and team member on that voyage, Australian yachtsman Mark McRae, visited and spoke to the family that found the bottle, and the story was picked up by the Australian media.
So bottle-post does work, but it takes messages 3 years to arrive. The bottle’s course showed how the currents work in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Everything drifting Westwards in the Southern Ocean gravitates towards the Great Australian Bight. In the Northern Hemisphere we have the Bay of Biscay, while the Southern Hemisphere has the Great Australian Bight.
Fedor Konyukhov