SEAL BEACH : Long-Distance Reply to Message in Bottle

Andy Sibert runs a chartered boat service out of Seal Beach and has sailed around the world. But this sea-loving salt was nevertheless surprised by the message about a voyage that he received in the mail last month.

It was a letter from a minister in the Marshall Islands, writing in response to a message found inside a wine bottle that had washed up on a remote Pacific atoll earlier this year.

The bottle was tossed into the sea more than a year ago by a tourist from Idaho who was on one of Sibert’s chartered voyages to the southern tip of Baja California.

“A lot of bottles are thrown overboard but few are found,” said Sibert, who, with his wife, Jan, runs Fantasy Sailing. “We’ve thrown bottles over the side before but never got anything back.”

The chain of events began in February, 1993, during a voyage from Long Beach to La Paz, Baja California, aboard Sibert’s boat, Enchanted Lady.

During the cruise, Estelle Aschliman wrote a note that said: “We are sailing off the shores of Baja California. I would like to know where this bottle ends up.”

The letter, including the Seal Beach address of Fantasy Sailing and a dollar bill for postage, was put in a bottle and thrown overboard, Sibert said.

Ocean currents sent the bottle more than 3,000 miles west to the Marshall Islands, where it washed up on Likiep atoll.

It was discovered by an island resident on March 23, according to a letter sent to Sibert by American-born Rev. Richard McHolsiff, who works on the island.

McHolsiff’s single-page letter described the island and said the bottle was discovered by a man named Jepaner. Several photographs of island residents were included with the letter. The Marshall Islands are some 1,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Because the Marshall Islands were once administered by the United States, and have strong diplomatic and military ties to the U. S., postage to Seal Beach cost just 29 cents, and the rest of Aschliman’s dollar was donated to the island’s Sudan hunger relief fund. It was “money well spent,” McHolsiff wrote.

Sibert is trying to contact Aschliman to tell her what became of the bottle.

“It was a surprise,” Sibert said. “You just don’t expect these things to come back.”