Sally Carlson was already having a “banner week” of treasure hunting when she came upon a message in a bottle laying on South Chesterman Beach.
The part-time Tofino resident was walking her dogs along the beach on Aug. 25 when she made the discovery and said she was initially angered by the sight.
“My dog had had a little potty there and I went over to pick it up and I noticed a bottle,” she said adding she assumed the bottle was washed up littler. “I get pissed when I see stuff like that. I picked it up and I thought ‘I’ll take this and throw it in the garbage on the way home.’”
She said she didn’t want to carry the bottle along her walk to Frank Island and back, so she set it down on some rocks to pick up on her way home.
“As I walked away, I don’t know why I did, but I turned around and took one last glance and I realized there was a piece of paper stuck in it,” she said. “Then I realized it had a top and I thought, ‘Well, this is silly. Why would somebody carefully screw a top on it and carelessly throw it back in the ocean.’ So, I went back and took a closer look and there was a message in a ziplock bag stuck in the neck of the bottle…Then I noticed there was writing on the bottle that said, ‘Do not break.’”
She said she opened the bottle and was delighted to pull out a message.
“It said, ‘This bottle was put out on July 29, 2017. Yay someone found my message in a bottle. If you are the lucky finder, put your name, the date, a little bit about you and the place you found it and put it out to sea again. Please do not keep and please put out in same bottle as before,’” Carlson said.“Then there’s another message dated August 2, 2017, that says ‘Found it while kayaking with my son in Victoria B.C. We love the ocean and this idea.”
She believes she is the first person to find the bottle since the last message and added that the original message included contacted information, so she reached out and learned the bottle had been thrown off a sailboat near the San Juan Islands.
She said she had never found a message in a bottle before and was delighted to participate in her discovery’s ongoing journey. She said she plans to write her own message to put inside and then her neighbour will toss it back out to sea while tuna fishing next week.
“I was really happy. I’ve been finding treasures every single day this week, but this tops it off,” she said. “I’ve found a surf board leash in really good shape, two baseball hats, a beautiful osprey feather, a perfect sand dollar, a dog leash; every time I go out there I find something.”
Carlson said she spends roughly six weeks a year in Tofino and always keeps an eye out for treasures during daily walks along the beach with her four dogs.