IT TOOK three years and thousands of miles. "Ireland finds Foxtrap boy's bottled message" read the headline in Shoreline, Newfoundland's largest-circulation community newspaper.
"As a young boy growing up in Pouch Cove, it was a rather futile pastime for John Hudson," the report read. "Dozens of times, he slipped a note into a bottle and tossed it into the ocean. No luck.
"But son Michael, then six years old, must have the seafarer's knack. Three years ago, as a gag more than anything else, he wrote his name and address on a piece of paper, placed it inside a plastic one-litre Pepsi bottle, and dropped it into the ocean near Kelly's Island.
"Having long forgotten about it, the Hudsons were overwhelmed when they received a letter from a 12-year-old Gaelic boy from Galway Bay in western Ireland last week. Neasan O Conghaile
wants to know more about Michael and his family and also wants to become a pen pal."
That young "Gaelic boy" is one of a family of three children living in An Cheibh, Inis Oirr, one of the Aran islands. A student at Colaiste Ghobnait, he remembers how his father found a plastic bottle washed ashore last November with a name and address in Newfoundland inside.
"I wrote to the person and told them," he says. "I thought that the family had probably been on holiday in this country at the time."
Neasan was more than surprised to learn that the bottle had, in fact, been cast into the water by Michael Hudson during a family outing on his grandparents' boat in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. His brother, Mark, also threw one overboard.
The Hudsons are similarly staggered at the final destination. Michael's father, John, studied tides and maps and concluded that the bottle did not head directly for western Europe, but was probably carried down the eastern coast of the US before being picked up by the North Atlantic drift.
Neasan has written to Michael twice and has told him about his hobbies. He contacted this column, having read about the (less well-travelled) bottle messages despatched by this reporter during a circumnavigation of this island in 1995. He is not sure if he wants to visit Newfoundland, but will keep corresponding.