Bottle Message Links Pen Pals Across Atlantic

By MANDY LOCKE

Ten-year-old Dylan Rice has a new pen pal.

This Edgartown school student wasn't exactly looking for an
extra hobby; he's pretty busy with school, Cub Scouts and the FARM
Institute. But ever since 17-year-old Juan Braìs Garcia Liz had
the courtesy to respond to Dylan's message in a bottle, this
Vineyard student has been paying extra attention in Spanish class.

"When my dad and I threw the bottle overboard, I thought,
‘I'll never hear back from that,' " said Dylan
this week as he read aloud a few sentences from Juan's letter
- something he's done at least a hundred times since the
airmail note arrived in the family's post office box just over a
week ago.

For 15 months, Dylan's bottle - lobbed from the stern of
the Martha's Vineyard ferry as the family left the Island on
Christmas Day 2001 - floated 2,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean
to Lugo, a province in northwest Spain.

The successful voyage of Dylan's bottle has amazed even the
saltiest of Vineyarders. Most bottled messages launched from Vineyard
shores make it no farther than Nantucket or the Cape - the rare
one drifts to the far reaches of North Carolina. The transatlantic
delivery also surprised Juan.

"I would like [to] know you, because it is very unusual to
find a letter in the sea," Juan writes in his second-grade-level
English. "I'm speak Spanish, but I study English. This
letter isn't wrote right because of it."

Philip Richardson, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute who specializes in ocean currents, imagines the bottle caught
a current that carried it out past Nantucket. From there, the bottle
likely floated along the continental shelf, southwest toward Cape
Hatteras, where it connected with the Gulf Stream. From there, Mr.
Richardson speculates, the bottle meandered eastward, veering north of
the Azores Islands. Then Dylan's message floated into the Bay of
Biscay, on the northern shore of Spain. A strong wind most likely drove
it onto the beach near Juan's small coastal town of Ovaladouro.
Fifteen months, Mr. Richardson said, is right on schedule for a delivery
such as Dylan's bottle.

This Edgartown boy's entire Cub Scout pack, of which he is now
a distinguished Webelo I, dropped messages in bottles off Vineyard
shores as part of a task to earn their communications patch. The Scouts
filled out cards with their names and addresses, stuffed them in old
wine bottles and sealed the tops with candle wax. Only one more of the
20 Cubs in Pack 94 heard back from this barrage of sea mail. His bottle
made it all the way to Cape Cod.

Dylan admits he'd nearly forgotten the message in the bottle
until his mom, Linda, tossed an piece of airmail into his lap last week
after an trip to the post office.

"Eew - I thought, ‘What the heck is that?'
Did you know that means United States?" Dylan asks, pointing to
his address on the envelope.

Dylan says he's never known anyone who lives in a foreign
country before, but his "neighbor moved to Florida" not too
long ago.

"I hope [Juan] can come and visit," Dylan said,
suggesting that this teenage Spaniard could sleep in the empty bottom
bunk in his room.

In the meantime, Dylan's putting some extra effort into his
Spanish lessons, a course he's been taking since first grade. The
fourth grader's Spanish teacher, Maria Parker, stayed after school
with him Monday to craft a reply to Juan's letter. His extra
project, Dylan bragged, earned him a golden homework pass - an
exemption from at least one other assignment.

"I told him how old I am. I told him I live on an Island in
Massachusetts. I told him he speaks very good English and writes well,
too. I think his handwriting is really nice," Dylan says.

Dylan mailed both the English and Spanish versions of his letter to
his new pen pal. The Cub Scout already has another round of questions
for his next letter to Juan - how did the bottle look when it
arrived? Does he have an older brother, too? Did he save the bottle?

The next exchanges between Dylan and his Spanish friend will likely
not take as long or even cost as much as an airmail stamp. The two have
swapped e-mail addresses.