The Time Hack

Day 361: Create and toss a ‘message in a bottle’

On day 361 of The Time Hack, I threw a message in a bottle into the East River, off the coast of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Why exactly? Well, if it worked for an 11-year-old… (Story below from the BBC.)

An 11-year-old US boy was stunned to get a reply to his message in a bottle from Portugal’s Azores Islands - via the more surefire medium of email.

Curtis Kipple wrote a letter about himself and his hometown in New York state, and put it in a bottle which was dropped into the Atlantic in March.

The message was found last week by Ana Ponte, 25, from the fishing village of Terceira, on the Azores archipelago.

The fifth-grader’s bottle had travelled 2,600 miles (4,190km).

“My brother and my father wake up earlier today and went to sea to catch a seafood very common here, and found a bottle with a message from a boy Curtis Kipple,” said Ms Ponte’s email - written in both English and Portuguese - to Curtis’s school.

REMEMBERED DETAILS

1. I recall explaining in the note that I wanted whomever found the bottle to email me at my private email address. 
2. I explained that I was a journalist and created the bottled note for The Time Hack. I then said that I threw the bottle into off the coast of Brooklyn in New York.
3. The piece of paper was torn from a graph paper notebook with a green cover. I wrote on both sides of the folded paper “Message in a bottle. Please read!”.
4. The bottle used in the experiment was a blue Powerade, purchased from a Texaco gas station in New Jersey.
5. I explained before throwing the bottle from a pier in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that I was throwing the bottle into the East River.
6. I threw it with my right hand, while leaning over the pier railing. The throw didn’t go off as planned and was at far more of a downward angle then expected. This could have been due to the wind, which was ferocious that night.

ACTUAL EVENTS

What happened on day 361? Find out here. And here.

REMEMBERED TIME

I believe it took 27 minutes and 29 seconds to write and toss a message in a bottle.

ACTUAL TIME

How long did it take? Find out here.

Why don’t videos or images of time appear on this site?