Message in a Bottle 2.0

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Welcome to the Educational Passages Podcast.
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Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences.
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I'm your host, Cassie Stymist.
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Welcome everybody to Season 4.
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Get ready to set sail on a brand new adventure as we launch our Imagine This series, where the magic of mini boats come alive through the voices and visions of those who make it all possible.
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In this series, each episode will paint a vivid picture of discovery, connection, and curiosity, not just tracking the voyages, but exploring the challenges and unexpected outcomes behind them.
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Now press play, close your eyes, and imagine this.
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This is the story of a mini boat landing that brought together the Outer Banks community in North Carolina with a serendipitous connection in the Bahamas.
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The Crimson Cyclone from Morristown Baird School in New Jersey, the one which just landed in Morocco on Christmas Eve 2025, was first launched back in 2023, also on Christmas Eve.
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But that's not the only coincidence this boat has seen.
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Back in 2023, teacher Lisa Swanson was on sabbatical.
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She had spent her year giving back to educational passages after seeing 10 mini boats launched since 2012.
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She traveled to Nantucket, Massachusetts, and even Ireland to see where her students' boats had landed.
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Check out our other podcast episodes all about this and all about the 10 years of the program at their school.
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Lisa delivered the finished Crimson Cyclone, the school's 11th mini boat to date at the time, to the port of Chester in Pennsylvania in December.
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The crew of the MV Independent Quest of the Independent Container Line planned to launch it during their future transit from Wilmington, North Carolina to Belgium, placing it right in the Gulf Stream.
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The students had hoped for the boat to travel across the Atlantic, or even around, but the journey was one of the shortest ones yet.
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On December twenty fourth, Christmas Eve, we heard from the captain.
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Launching of Miniboat was successfully completed.
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Please find some details from launching.
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Merry Christmas from all crew of the MV Independent Quest.
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And then the tracking began.
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But it was only for a day as the boat took off back towards the North Carolina coast.
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She landed at Cape Lookout Seashore on December twenty sixth, a few hours after Christmas Day had come to an end.
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It was found on the beach later that morning and was carried down to the southern point of the beach and relaunched from the surf zone on the western side before it was even noon.
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This sent the boat towards Atlantic Beach a few hours later.
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As it was approaching, I texted Lisa.
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She said crazy where it was landing, we, referring to her family, were there just last spring break.
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We toured Fort Mackin just up the beach from where the boat is heading.
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We rented a house close by.
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And I remember replying that the Big Rock Tournament is based there in Moorhead City too, referring to the event we had both just learned about that July when NASCAR Hall of Famer Terry Labonte and his boat shifting gears picked up a mini boat during the tournament.
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It was the SS Ames Infinity and the crew brought it back to the landing that day, which raised awareness for the program and gave the kids back in South Carolina who built it a sense of accomplishment and pure awe as many of them were fans of Terry.
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At eight PM that evening, the Crimson Cyclone had made landfall in Atlantic Beach.
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I texted Lisa again to let her know.
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Hopefully you'll get a call tomorrow at daybreak, she said.
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But by 11 AM the next day there had been no calls.
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It was a public beach, so this was surprising to us.
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I see it's raining down there now, probably why no one is out, Lisa said shortly after eleven AM.
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Then just minutes after that text, I finally got a call.
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It was from Julia Orledge Deal, who said it was found during her morning run and that she moved it up to the dune away from the surf.
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But we needed someone to take it to a school nearby.
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Lisa called the town offices.
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They were still closed for the holiday.
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She tried the fire department.
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But then Matt Lechner called just before noon.
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I was in a daze at that point having come down with COVID over the holiday, so all I remember is texting Lisa and asking her to call Matt back.
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My text even said, I think he said his name was Mike and he lived local, was happy to help.
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But that's not what really happened.
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Matt had found the boat during his morning run just after Julia and then called the number on the deck, which was me.
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He took the boat to his house for safekeeping.
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Lisa and Matt talked and texted for days.
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She said he fielded questions from the kids about sailing from Bahamas to Maine.
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He also sent the kids sea hearts that he had been collecting over the years.
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Sea hearts are seeds that are carried by the ocean currents.
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Sea hearts are ones shaped like a heart, and he sent one for each student.
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Matt also completed some repairs as he found water inside the cargo hold, so it really was a good thing that it was a short trip after all.
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But when the boat was ready, there were no connections for relaunching it.
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They all fell through.
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Must have been because of the holiday.
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By the end of January, all were anxious to see the cyclone back at sea, so I finally decided to reach out to a new friend of mine, Charles, one of the crewmates from Terry's boat that I had met in July.
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I knew he lived in the area, kind of, so I gave it a try.
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Charles immediately replied to my request and said he'd get back to me.
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I think it was not even ten minutes later when he got back to me.
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He said something like, My good buddy Dale is going out of the Oregon Inlet soon and happy to help.
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I'll text you his number.
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So I forwarded the number to Lisa and they talked.
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She called me with such excitement afterwards because he had invited Lisa to go with him.
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Why don't you come with us?
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he had said.
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And they were going to tag tuna for the Tag a Tuna program.
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She was over the moon.
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What an opportunity for her as a teacher, who had been on sabbatical that year to explore more learning opportunities for her students.
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The tuna and miniboat deployment were a perfect fit.
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To prepare for the mission, Dale met Matt and picked up the cyclo miniboat down in Pine Knoll shores.
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The two of them at the time had no idea what strange and serendipitous connection was to come just days later.
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Lisa's students began emailing Dale lots of questions about fishing, the tagging program, conservation, and the ocean.
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They kept talking to Matt too.
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In February, Lisa traveled down to North Carolina to relaunch the mini boat.
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She spent a few days in town because the weather was a little unpredictable.
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While she waited with the crew at a rental house, they all got to talking.
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Lisa shared stories of the last 11 years of the mini boats she's been involved with.
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She shared more about how the recent boat Cyclone landed on Pine Knoll Shores only hours after it was launched, how Matt found it, thinking it was a Christmas decoration of some sort at first, and how her students had learned so much as she and Matt texted and emailed all the time.
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Lisa also shared about a recent message in a bottle story that Matt had heard from his boss.
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Turns out that his boss's wife was on vacation in the Bahamas recently when they found a bottle on the beach.
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They were extra surprised when they opened it up to find that it came from someone back home in North Carolina.
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And what are the chances of that?
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Dale was listening to this story, of course, and his eyes lit up at this part.
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He asked, wait, where?
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Lisa recalled that the business was Genesis Custom Construction, but she hadn't remembered any names.
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Genesis Construction Company happens to sit only blocks away from where Dale's old boat, the Sensation, is docked at the Moorhead City waterfront.
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Dale laughed and said, Time out, time out.
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He pulled out his cell phone and showed Lisa a picture.
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It was the picture of the bottle that was found in the Bahamas by Matt's boss's wife, Diana Kromka.
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That was my bottle, he said.
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Lisa hadn't known at the time that Matt was sharing the story that the bottle was sent by the same guy that Matt met to deliver the mini boat for its relaunch.
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Dale had launched over fifty bottles in the past, all from his boat off the coast of North Carolina during Big Rock tournaments, each with a dollar and a business card with his contact info.
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This bottle was from May 3, 2017.
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It's the only one that he ever heard back from.
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Did it drift the whole time?
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Or did it just land in time for Diana to find it?
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I guess we'll never know.
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We can never know, unless you put a GPS tracking device on it like our mini boats, like a message in a bottle 2.0.
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Some of this story was shared by Zach Nally in the Carterick County's Beachcomber magazine in May 2024, celebrating sea connections from mini sailboats to messages in a bottle.
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See pages 18 to 23.
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In that article, Dale said he liked to send bottles out because, and I quote, you're putting it out into the abyss and you don't know what could come back.
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Well, I think it's safe to say that Dale has gotten a lot back from this one bottle, and so have we.
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This connection has grown into now a formal program with the Big Rock Foundation, who are now helping to bring the mini boat program to Carteret County.
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Last year we worked with Beaufort Middle School who launched Chargers by the Sea, and this year we're just now getting started with the Newport Middle School on a brand new boat.
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Before I end, I need to say a big thank you to Dale and Charles for these connections because without them, so many students would not have had the opportunity to participate and therefore connect and learn.
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And of course, thanks to teachers like Lisa who take a year off to strengthen their educational experiences and give them memories that will last a lifetime.
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You have been listening to the Educational Passages Podcast.
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Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization.
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Please consider making a donation to help us continue our work bringing people together to learn more about the ocean.
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To donate, head over to educationalpassages.org slash support.
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Thanks for listening.