Have you ever sent a message in a bottle?
Did you get any long-distance replies?
I’ve done it a few hundred times, whenever I’m fishing offshore. I include two identical postcards, one from me for the finder to keep, and one addressed to me with the message area blank.
A couple of times I’ve gotten a return card, and once someone bothered to buy and return a local postcard.
Mine never go over about a hundred kilometres however. I guess I just don’t wait for a strong outgoing tide.
Long time ago - maybe 10 sent at most - never any reply.
When I was about ten, I tossed several bottles with messages into the Connecticut river at Portland. I got a response from a boy living in Hartford (okay, so the bottle didn’t go all that far. I still thought it was cool.) I cooresponded with him for about a year.
I sent messages in bottles probably about 20 times when I was little. Never got a return message, or found a bottle with a message. I did send a message on a helium balloon and got a message from the owner of a bookstore about 25 miles away who sent me a $10 gift certificate!
Very recently I read an article on this and I cannot for the life of me remember where. I’ll try to remember and find it. It said about some guy who sent messages in bottles from North America (some river IIRC) and they had arrived in Europe and it was surprising and led to the theory that some current or other was stronger than previously believed and had carried them south into the gulf stream which, in turn took them to Europe. I wish I could remember where I read it…
I did this as a kid. I never got any replies.
One reason might be something that no one ever mentions – unlike those cartoons you see, REAL bottles in the water float BOTTOM side up, not cork-side up.
If you want your bottle to look like the ones you see in the movies, you’ll have to weight it with something to keep hat inviting cork-side up. Otherwise all they’ll see is the flat, unappealing bottom of the bottle (especially if everything in the bottle shifts to the neck and keep that end down.
http://www.s-t.com/daily/08-99/08-26-99/a01lo007.htm
http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9804/message.bottle/
Filthy litterbugs.
Actually, this reminds me of a comedian I saw on Comedy Central or somesuch. He said he like to go the beach really early in the morning and throw a bunch of bottles with messages in them into the ocean. Then he’d hang around all day and wait for somebody to find one. Inside the bottle he’d penned the message “I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU.”
And there he’d be.
I thought it was funny.
Aren’t Message Boards a new twist on the message-in-a-bottle tradition?
You toss a message into the ether, and wait to see what comes back.
Only no bottle. Or ocean. And you know pretty much where the message is going. And who’s going to see it, more or less. And who’s going to respond, more or less…
OK, it’s completely different…
-Rue.
Don’t tell wishbone, but in gradeschool, I sent a message on a helium balloon.
I was going to put this on my last post, but I had to go back and find his thread. Simply opening a new window completely escaped me untill after I hit “Submit Reply”.
-Rue.
I wrote a message & put it in a bottle, once.
It said:
Then I lobbed it through his plate glass window.
Does that count? 
When I was 10 or so, I wrote my address on a helium balloon and launced it from my back yard at 2301 S. 9th Street in Springfield, Illinois.
A few weeks later it was sent back to me in an envolope. The return address was an insurance agency in Indiana. I forget which city it was, but just to get to the Indiana border it would have had to have gone about 100 miles.
Pretty cool from a 10-year-old’s point of view!
Back when I was in 6th grade (about 19 years ago), I sent a message out on a helium balloon. I haven’t gotten a response…yet.
While turkey hunting several years ago near Edgefield, SC (home of Strom Thurmond, among other things), I found a balloon with a note attached. It had been launched several months earlier by a girl from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. I bought several post cards of Edgefield and wrote her a nice note. I even sent the balloon back with the note and cards. I never received a reply. Ingrate!