Message in a Bottle

by Han
(Brittany, France)

Try to imagine this: you're a sailor, some 200 years ago; you are part of the crew sailing a ship around the Cape of Good Hope to Farawayia and you miss your sweetheart so much but you can't reach her to let her know how much you love her. So you write her a letter, put it in an empty bottle, cork it and hope it will ever reach her.

Of course this bottle will be the victim of ill winds, adverse currents and threatening rocky coasts so the chance of your letter ever reaching her is very small indeed.

You're catching the right romantic mood? Ok, I'll go on.

At the moment, an incredible project is on it's way to see if an inanimate object can reach a quite opposite goal: to find the origin of the wind.

A Dutch artist has designed and built a trimaran with a length of about 24 feet which, because it is built exactly to do that, sails straight upwind. It is propelled by a rather large windmill connected cunningly to a relatively small propeller under the waterline and it is kept straight upwind by a fin which is formed by the upward, thinning, hindpart of the main hull.

On board are repair materials, as well as instructions (in 45 languages) for whomever finds it in disrepair, to add to it as he thinks fit.

Next year a follow-up expedition will sail to the Pacific, where it has started it's voyage, to find it's trail, whereabouts and to record the stories of the people who found it.

Still interested? Click www.windvinder.com, click on the British flag and marvel!