BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
The world’s oldest known message in a bottle has been found on a West Australian beach nearly 132 years after it was tossed overboard in the Indian Ocean, 950km from the coast.
Until now, the previous world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years, four months and 18 days between jettison and discovery.
Dated 12 June 1886, this message was jettisoned from the German sailing barque Paula as part of a long-term oceanographic experiment to better understand global ocean currents and find faster, more efficient shipping routes.
The bottle was found just north of Wedge Island, 180km north of Perth, by Tonya Illman.
“It just looked like a lovely old bottle and I thought it might look good in my bookcase. The note was damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string. I took it home and dried it out, and when I opened it I saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint handwriting.”
Tonya’s husband Kym then spent some time researching it online and discovered their find appeared to be part of an official drift bottle experiment conducted by what was then known as the Deutsche Seewarte, or German Naval Observatory.
From 1864 until 1933, thousands of bottles were thrown into the world’s oceans from German ships, each containing a form on which the captain would write the date it was jettisoned, the exact coordinates at the time, the name of the ship, its home port and travel route.
On the back, it asked the finder to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it, either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German Consulate.
“After much digging, we were able to make out the date, the coordinates, the ship’s name and direction of the voyage (Cardiff in Wales to Makassar in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia),” says Tonya.
Boaties at Lake Taupo’s Motuoapa village are celebrating the completion of a new marina – created by removing an island. Motuoapa’s original marina was built more than 50 years ago – when the village was just a small settlement. Catering mainly to small fishing vessels, engineers designed the marina with a circular basin. It featured a large island in the middle, with short finger piers rimming the edge.
The new marina was built by Auckland’s Bellingham Marine – the local branch of one of the world’s leading design/build marina construction companies. When the redevelopment project was given the green light in 2016, the designers knew the island had to go.
A dam was built at the marina’s entrance and water was pumped from the basin, to a level of half a metre. Dredges were brought in to dismantle the island and the soil was used to reclaim land at the northern end of the marina. This created several acres to be used as picnic, recreation and parking areas for guests.
“The project was complex but it’s been well worth the wait,” says deputy harbourmaster Toni Maulder. “It allows boats to be berthed safely in deeper, cleaner water with modern, compliant facilities for berth holders and the general public to enjoy.” The marina has 158 berths ranging in size from eight to 14m. The docks feature FRP thru-rods and aluminum pile guides.
Bellingham Marine specialises in floating docks, platform and wave attenuation systems for marinas worldwide. The company also produces dry storage systems for the upland storage of boats.