| P O R T H O L E : 15 March 16

QUEENSLAND police have
managed to make contact
with some foreign sailors after
discovering five messages in a
bottle which had drifted more
than 14,000km in two years.
Released into the South Pacific
Ocean near the Galapagos
Islands in 2014, the messages
were written in French and
English by a group of friends
on a sailing adventure aboard a
small vessel called the Vivo.
The bottle survived the Great
Barrier Reef before drifting
ashore on a remote beach in Far
North Queensland.
Three female officers from
Barnaga Police Station –
Australia’s northernmost
mainland police station – found
the bottle on the beach while
exploring Ussher Point near
Cape York on their day off.
After extracting the messages
they found they included email
addresses and attempted to
send them a message.
The first to respond was
26-year-old Frenchwoman Iris
Jeusel, while others included
the captain of Vivo Michael
Roberts, who said “we sent the
bottle on its way at the midpoint
between the Galapagos and the
Marquisies Islands.
“Amazing that it not only
survived but that the notes are
still legible,” he wrote.
Also amazing is that the sailors
recorded the moment they
released the bottle, with a video
viewable on youtube.com.