Ocracoke message in bottle found in Bahamas

By Connie Leinbach

Even if Ocracoke School graduates don’t venture far and wide into the outside world, their messages may.

That is, messages in bottles that their high school English teacher Charles Temple makes sure get tossed into the Gulf Stream and then who knows where they end up.

In December, a bottle with a message from 2021 graduate Hannah Belch was found on an Exuma, Bahamas, beach.

“So, that means, as best I can figure, that it made an entire circuit of the North Atlantic, following the Gulf Stream to just south of Ireland, hitching a ride south on the Canary Current, then heading back west on the Atlantic North Equatorial Current, and then pulled into the Bahamas banks,” Temple said about this activity.

Since Belch’s bottle had been floating in the current for four years it might have gone around twice, Temple said.

A few years ago, he began this activity of having the graduating class enclose messages in empty wine bottles, sealing them back up and then dropping them into the Gulf Stream, which heads north about 200 miles off Ocracoke.

“We don’t want them coming back to our beach,” he said.

If Temple himself doesn’t make the trip to the Gulf Stream, Ernie Doshier, captain of the sportfishing boat Gecko, or other friends will take the bottles.

“When the kids graduate, they’re launching out and we don’t know where they’re going to end up and it felt like kind of a cool metaphor for me and sort of apt for where we are and the life we’re sending them away from,” Temple said.

Each student gets a bottle, and the message is from Temple but with an individualized note about each youth. It also contains Temple’s email so that if they’re found, they can inform Temple.

While beach combing, a yacht captain out of Nassau found Belch’s bottle, Temple said.

“He plans to throw it off a bridge in the Great Lakes,” Temple said.

He doesn’t ask in the note for the finders to send the bottles back and dozens are still out there.

“I had a bunch one year found in Long Island and Nantucket only about six months after we launched them,” he said.

Others were found in Portugal, France, Morocco and one in the UK.

Students from prior classes asked why they didn’t get the chance to send bottles out.

“So, I’m thinking about packing up a bottle for each class,” he said.

Belch graduated college in December with a bachelor’s in kinesiology and is headed to grad school for a master’s degree in athletic training.

“I love it when one of the bottles comes back to shore,” Temple said in a Facebook post. “Sending the bottles out feels quite similar to watching a class graduate. You have an idea where they’re heading, but no clue where they’ll end up.”

Another of Ocracoke School graduates’ message bottles was found in Portugal in 2022.