Floating flight

Surprises spring from the sea. Frank Bolger of Wildwood, New Jersey, United States found a message in a bottle while walking on a local beach with his wife and daughter on 17 August.

"Greetings from Ireland. I have thrown this bottle into the sea for someone to find another day. Maybe it has traveled down to Africa or up to Iceland. I won't know if someone found this, but it's found," the piece of paper inside the bottle read.

The note was signed by Aoife, according to reports. The Wildwood Sun by the Sea Magazine published Bolger's appeal to find the sender, and Aoife's dad read it, Irish News reported. Soon, Aoife got in touch with Bolger, who happened to have Irish roots, and the two became friends.

Amazingly, it took the bottle more than four years to cross the Atlantic Ocean and wash up on US shores. Aoife sent the bottle from the beach in Bray, County Wicklow on 17 July 2019. Ireland, whose most westerly point is Dunmore in County Kerry, is 5,038 kilometers away.

Even more amazing than the journey of Aoife's message was a Chinese man whom South Korean coast guards found stuck in tidal flats near the western port city of Incheon's cruise terminal on 21 August.

Police arrested the rescued man, later identified as rights activist Kwon Pyong, according to South Korea-based campaigner Lee Dae-seon of the non-government organization Dialogue China.

Lee said Kwon risked illegally entering South Korea because he was being persecuted in his country for criticizing Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Kwon, 35, reached Incheon by jet skiing from Shandong Province, China, a distance of more than 300 kilometers.

Wearing a life vest and helmet, he used binoculars and a compass to navigate. Kwon also towed five barrels of fuel, refilling the jet ski gas tank along the way and dumping the empty barrels into the sea, according to the South Korean Coast Guard.