Message In Bottle Travels 3,200 Miles, Helps Boy Cope With Loss

OCEAN CITY, MD — Bottles floating in the ocean with rolled-up notes tucked inside have intrigued generations. They often say goodbye to great loves, send hopes and dreams into the seas, or put out a call for a pen pal.

But little did a couple who found a message in a bottle on the beach of Donegal, Ireland — 3,200 miles from its launch point off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland — know it would help the boy who threw it into the Atlantic three years earlier deal with the loss of a friend and neighbor.

Sasha Yonyak was 11 in 2019 when he and Wayne Smith threw a bottle into the Atlantic while on a fishing excursion, one of many for a pair who may have seemed to have been unlikely friends.

They were separated in age by about five decades, but the years between them didn’t matter when they were on the water, Sasha’s father told The Maryland Coast Dispatch’s Charlene Sharpe. It was Sharpe who helped connect Sasha with the couple from Belfast who found the bottle earlier this month while vacationing in Donegal.

“There’s not many friendships like that,” Vlad Yonyak, 45, said. “Two people, very different, but they find something and have a good time.”

Sasha and Smith found the bottle at a marina on the bay at Ocean City. Inside were two $1 bills and a note telling the finder to “pass it on,” The Washington Post reported. They decided it was a neat tradition to continue, so Sasha wrote and carefully waterproofed his own note, and he and Smith tossed the bottle and the money into the ocean.

Ciaran Marron and wife Rita Simmonds found the bottle on Jan. 5 while walking on the beach at Donegal.

“We knew as soon as we found it that it was going to take us on an adventure,” Simmonds, 69, told The Post's Sydney Page.

Though intriguing, the contents inside were damp, and Simmonds and Marron didn’t want to unfurl them until the message had a chance to dry overnight by the fireplace.

When it was safe to unravel the contents of the bottle, they learned a bit about Sasha.

“I love boogie boarding, fishing and much more,” he wrote in a letter that Marron, 64, told The Post was “simple but beautiful.”

“I love fish and crabs,” he said. “I love riding bikes. I am really an active person.”

He listed the names of his best buddies — Stone, Lisa and Wayne — added a phone number, and urged whomever found it to “please please call.”

The number provided was no longer in service.

But they weren’t daunted.

“It was just such a magical thing to find his message,” Marron told The Post. “We knew he had to know it landed safely and so far away.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” his wife added.

They found Sasha’s father on Facebook and reached out to The Coast Dispatch. Sasha told the newspaper he had forgotten all about the bottle.

Now that they’ve connected, Sasha, now 14, and his family are planning a trip to Ireland to the spot where Marron and Simmonds found it, and meet his new friends.

The couple’s friends are eagerly awaiting that day, too.

“All our friends and family want to know the kid who threw the bottle in the ocean,” Simmonds told The Coast Dispatch. “He’s already a celebrity here.”

When Sasha visits, the plan is for the three to leave to bottle, with their own “pass it on” note tucked inside, on the beach where it was found.

“That little bottle was bobbing up and down in storms and darkness in the ocean until it landed safely on a sunny beach,” Simmonds told The Post. “This is a story of hope.”

Wayne Smith died in August at age 64. But Sasha’s friendship with him continues to ride unseen currents, like the bottle.

“He was still grieving, and this brought back fond memories,” Simmonds told The Post. “We think somehow Wayne had a part in bringing us all together.”

Sasha’s father added: “This bottle reflects the friendship of Mr. Wayne and Sasha. Mr. Wayne is no longer with us, but what he did with Sasha is. His deeds are living.”