U.S. bottled message found in Portugal

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ADAMS BASIN, N.Y., Dec. 5 (UPI) -- A New York state 10-year-old whose bottled message was thrown into the Gulf Stream in March says he has word it had been found 2,589 miles away in Portugal.

Curtis Kipple, 10, of Adams Basin, wrote the message-in-a-bottle as part of a fourth-grade class project and it was thrown into the Gulf Stream in March by Outer Banks fishermen off the coast of North Carolina, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle reported Monday.

"I wrote about how I like to play football with my dad," said Kipple, who is now a fifth-grader at Fred W. Hill School in Brockport. "And video games."

Kipple's fourth-grade teacher, Chris Albrecht, said he received an e-mail last week from a Portuguese woman informing him that the boy's bottle had been found by her father and brother while they were fishing off the island of Terceira.

"My brother and my father [woke] up earlier today and went to sea to catch a seafood very common here and found a bottle with a message from a boy Curtis Kipple," Ana Ponte, 25, wrote in the e-mail.

"About 80 percent of my students have never seen the ocean. That Curtis's bottle made it across the Atlantic Ocean is pretty amazing," Albrecht said.