Mate/Engineer Chris Bassage of M/Y Kewpie was in for quite the surprisewhile he was helping clean up hurricane debris at Puerto del Ray Marina in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, followingHurricanes Irma and Maria. After a long day in the sun of gathering plasticcontainers and rubbish that had blown onto a nearby beach, he noticed a clear,corked wine bottle while he was working through a section of rocky terrain.Upon inspection, he spotted a letter inside — but, suspecting that the letter mightcontain some sort of much-needed motivation, he decided to wait for the rest ofthe crew to open the bottle.
At the end of the day, it was time. “We cracked the bottle,carefully pulled away the crumbled Ziploc bag and slowly unrolled the moistpaper,” Bassage says. “As I started reading the letter, I immediately got goosebumps as not only was the letter from seven years ago, but [it was] from afamiliar boat, with a familiar name. [The bottle] had been dropped during anAtlantic crossing in the mid-Atlantic.”
Not only had the bottle survived seven years in the ocean,it was still whole even after washing up on rocky terrain and enduring twoCategory 5 hurricanes.
The letter read:
“We alone are the godsof our own destiny, sure confidence, inner strength. I control my life.” —November 2010, M/Y Sequel P, TheChef, Mid-Atlantic
Bassage reached out to the chef and thanked him for themotivation, which was sorely needed in the aftermath of Puerto Rico’s hurricane,which left many without water or electricity. What’s an even better ending tothe tale? Turns out the chef had met his wife on Sequel P and married her six months after dropping the bottle inthe sea. How’s that for a love story?