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Are you as fascinated with message-in-bottle stories as I am? I write about them every time I see one, because there is just something appealing about a bottle with a letter inside, cap back on (or cork) and waiting for it to bob its way across the seven seas.

Here's one that started off here in Maryland!  In 2019, now-14-year-old Sasha Yonyak cast away a message from a fishing boat off Ocean City MD, but nothing happened for these several years, so he was ready to give up waiting to hear anything. But...

Sasha

From the amount of time it took to traverse the Atlantic, you might almost want to say that the USPS picked it up and took it, but apparently the currents did the trick. 3,000 miles and it winds up in the happy hands of an Irish couple.

Belfast residents Ciaran Marron and Rita Simmonds took a vacation in Donegal a while back to ring in the New Year.  Walking along the beach on January 5, they spotted a glass bottle washed up ashore.

“We knew as soon as we found it that it was going to take us on an adventure,” said Simmonds, 69.

Wisely, they didn't remove the papers from inside the bottle and unroll them right away, choosing the prudent course of letting the documents dry overnight by the fireplace. The next morning, the dry papers came out easily, and Ciaran and Rita found themselves with a handwritten note and two American dollar bills.

Unrolling the scroll, they found a letter written by then-11-year-old Sasha from Maryland, telling all about himself — including his home town, info about his hobbies and interests, and the names of the other members of his squad:  “Stone, Lisa and Wayne.”

“I love boogie boarding, fishing and much more,” he wrote, adding “I love riding bikes. I am really active person.” He left a phone number and finished the letter with an earnest plea: “Please please call.”

Marron, 64, said, “His letter was simple but beautiful.” 

He and his wife dialed the number Sasha gave, but it's no longer in service. Simmonds said, "We were determined to find him. It was just such a magical thing to find his message. We knew he had to know it landed safely and so far away.”

If only more people were like these two! Her husband added, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing!" which just goes to show you that the bottle proves that “the world is a small place.”

With only a first name and a town, they had very few clues to work with. First step was to contact an Ocean City, and mirable dictu, a reporter there had a friend who knew Sasha's parents, and they met up the 2022 way - via Facebook - on January 14.

Vlad Yonyak is Sasha's dad, and he found it "very surprising" that the bottle had found land on the Emerald Isle.

He also told the Washington Post that hearing from Ciaran and Rita came at a very nice time for the Yonyaks. They had been dealing with sad times of late. 

Sasha had been hanging around Bahia Marina in OC with his neighbor Wayne Smith when he found the bottle in the first place. Vlad Yonyak says Smith was five decades older than his son, but they hung around a lot together, sharing a lot of interests, most notably fishing.

The bottle they found three years ago had two one-dollar bills in it, along with a note from two American women. They were not able to track down those women, but they decided to honor their request to "pass it on." Which they did, sealing up a new note along with the two bucks. They dropped it off the side of a boat when they went fishing two weeks later, and for all this time, waited for a reply.

The letter in the bottle

“We predicted it would go to the gulf stream,” Sasha said, and he was surprised to learn that the bottle took the northeasterly stream to the British Isles.  

Hearing from the Irish couple brought a little happiness to Sasha, because Mr Smith died in August at 64.

He feels that it was a sentimental symbol that he heard from the bottle's recipients, because the phone number that Marron and Simmonds unsuccessfully dialed was Smith's, disconnected since August.

 “He spent a lot of time with Sasha,” the senior Yonyak said of Smith. “They became very good friends.” They bonded over the bottle, and hearing of the full circle experience has been cheerful for Sasha.

 And the Irish couple agrees. “He was still grieving, and this brought back fond memories,” Simmonds said. “We think somehow Wayne had a part in bringing us all together.”

Mr Smith and Sasha