By Emma Bouthillette 

Staff Writer

The Police wrote a song about sending a message in a bottle in 1979, Nicholas Spark’s wrote a love story in 1998 and Hollywood made it into a film in 1999.

But for Wales resident Andrew Langley, finding a message in a bottle has become more than song lyrics or a romantic plotline. 

Langley works for the Port Authority and is a member of the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the U.S. Coast Guard.

“[On March 11] I was out checking the coast line for storm damage. It was west of Pembrey Harbor [Wales] that I spotted the bottle. There was loads of rubbish, but my attention focused on this bottle,” Langley said.

When he returned home, Langley and his wife opened the bottle to find the following letter: “We’re vacationing in Maine. We wanted to know where this bottle ends up. Could you send this addressed envelope to us? Please let us know where you found it. If you include your name and address, we will send you $10 for your trouble. Thank you, Ross. P.S. I like cereal.”

“Finding a message in a bottle is something I’ve harbored this ambition for since I was a young kid. I thought it a romantic story my parents told me when I was young,” Langley said.

On July 29, 2006, Vicki Wheeless helped her son, Ross Wheeless, 9 years old at the time, write the letter Langley found, but the postscript he scrawled himself. The Wheeless family of Tempe, Ariz., vacations in Kennebunkport. They decided to send messages in bottles out to the open ocean just to see where they would end up. Along with the bottle found by Langley, two other bottles  were thrown that day from the Kennebunkport side of the breakwater of the Kennebunk River, near the Colony Hotel. Only Ross Wheeless has received a response.

“We were trying to think of something fun to do,” Vicki Wheeless said.

“I thought it was going to sink,” said Ross Wheeless, now 11.  

According to Portland’s Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System’s Web site, flow direction and intensity of currents depends on wind, the spinning of Earth and landmasses off the coast of Kennebunkport. Currents of surface water enter the Gulf of Maine and flow around Nova Scotia into the Bay of Fundy. The coast then deflects currents southwest, creating a counterclockwise rotation of water. This rotation can move surface waters about seven nautical miles per day. 

As the current flows along the coast and spins back out to sea, it can be picked up by the Gulf Stream, carrying surface water across the Atlantic to the U.K., which would explain how Ross Wheeless’s bottle ended up in Wales. 

“It had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and traveled up past the windswept beaches of Cornwall and Devon and into the Bristol Channel and the Loughor Estuary, quite a journey and what a birthday present,” Langley said.

Langley, who found the bottle the day after his birthday, said it was not the only coincidence.

“To our astonishment, the day the letter was sent was the day we were married. We felt honored and blessed to have received this message. It is something I very much doubt could happen again,” Langley said.

 “I sent the letter back giving the GPS fix of where I found it together with a Kellogg’s variety pack,” Langley said.

When Ross Wheeless returned home after baseball practice in mid-March, he was surprised to see a package, addressed to him, from Wales. He said he was even more perplexed after opening the package to find someone from Wales sent him cereal.

“It wasn’t until we started reading the letter that we figured out what it was,” Vicki Wheeless said.

Ross Wheeless has kept in touch with Langley, sending him $10 as promised.

Vicki Wheeless said the family is planning to send the Langley’s a care package with gifts from Kennebunkport. 

“I’m going to save the eight pack of cereal,” Ross Wheeless said. 

He plans to continue writing to Langley as a pen pal, via standard mail. 

“I know this story has given a lot of people pleasure and put a smile on their faces. It would be great to meet up with the family at some point,” Langley said.

Kennebunkport Code Enforcement Officer Brian Shaw said sending a message in a bottle was not something the town would worry about.

“It’s like little kids having a lemonade stand – it’s not really retail. If they send a clear bottle sealed with a message in it, I can’t see how it would do any damage,” Shaw said.

Sending a message in a bottle isn’t the most reliable form of communication, but in this case, it has created a new friendship.