By Jonathan L'Ecuyer
Volunteer lighthouse keeper Ann Hernandez celebrated her 56th birthday in October 2003 the same way she had the prior dozen years.
She wrote a short message, sealed it in a wine bottle, and gave it to her boyfriend to hurl into the ocean from high above Thacher Island's eastern shore.
For more than six years, the old Korbel champagne bottle braved the elements as it drifted some 3,200 miles across the Atlantic Ocean — until finally being plucked from the depths this summer by a recently retired couple fishing near the beach at Saint Gilles Croix de Vie on the western shore of France.
Hernandez continued her beloved birthday tradition on the island — located off Rockport's rugged coast and home to the town's iconic twin lighthouses — each Oct. 10 together with longtime boyfriend Alan Tomaska until last fall.
Unfortunately, Tomaska said yesterday, Hernandez passed away last December at age 61 before she could learn of the bottle's adventurous journey and subsequent discovery in Europe.
"She would've been ecstatic, she would've been smiling from ear to ear," said Tomaska yesterday about how Ann would've reacted to the news. "I can't tell you how much she loved that island."
On Aug. 2, Michel and Daniele Onesim, of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, France, were fishing on their boat when Michel noticed the bottle.
"I saw a transparent bottle floating," a French newspaper quoted Michel Onesim as saying. "In bringing it aboard, we noticed that there was a message inside and that the neck was corked and made watertight with wax."
The note read "Ann Hernandez is a lighthouse keeper on Thacher Island, Cape Ann light station, and had a birthday there Oct.10, 2003. Drop her a card at home. 323 Niagara Park Forest, IL 60466 USA."
Michel Onesim was inspired by the message and made it his mission to find its author.
He sent a note to Hernandez but it was returned undeliverable due to her death. Michel then e-mailed the Thacher Island Association Web site asking for assistance in contacting her.
Paul St. Germain, president of the association, monitors the Web site and immediately notified Tomaska at his home just outside Chicago and contacted Michel Onesim.
In an e-mail to the Times yesterday, the Onesims expressed remorse about Hernandez's death.
"We made a great discovery Aug. 2 when we were at sea on our boat," Michel Onesim said. "We are sad to learn that Ann has left without knowing that we had rescued her bottle."
The Onesims, who framed the message that also included a sketch by Hernandez of the twin lights and the island's nautical location, say they hope to visit Thacher Island to meet Tomaska and St. Germain. The rare find landed the Onesims on the pages of two French newspapers in August.
Tomaska and Hernandez had been volunteer keepers on Thacher Island since 1991. Typically, they came in October when the crowds are fewer and the days can be spent in uninterrupted work.
Each year since 1991, the pair would share a bottle of champagne on Ann's birthday and she would always write a message and add some of her colorful artwork to it before placing the missive in the emptied bottle.
Though Tomaska was designated the official "thrower" — he would go to the eastern shore near the whistle house and as the tide was going out throw the bottle as far as he could — he said the idea was all Ann's.
One of Hernandez's bottles was found in Marshfield in 1999, but she wasn't impressed, Tomaska said.
"The odds of a bottle travelling from Thacher Island to the shores of France are incredibly low," St. Germain said.
That doesn't seem the case, however, from Rockport.
In May 2008, a message in a bottle thrown from the deck of the USS Boone while the ship was anchored off Rockport's coast in October 2007 washed ashore on the sands of Vila Cha, a seaside fishing village north of Porto, Portugal.
Tomaska met Hernandez in the 1980s when the pair worked together; they eventually started seeing each other but never married, though they acted like a married couple, Tomaska said.
Hernandez's family originally hails from Framingham and she has many relatives still living in Massachusetts. It was during a trip to Long Beach to visit one of her uncles in July 1991 that Hernandez read an article in the Times about the Thacher Island Association's need for volunteer lighthouse keepers. Hernandez applied immediately and after a pair of lighthouse keepers fell ill, she and Tomaska were tapped to care for the twin lights in October 1991 — the month of the so called "Perfect Storm."
Tomaska is expected to arrive in Rockport tonight together with Hernandez's 40-year-old son, David, to start another October stay on the island — albeit a bittersweet one.
"It's all (David's) talked about since the day she passed," he said, shortly before hitting the road yesterday.
The pair plan to spread Hernandez's ashes over Thacher Island on what would've been her 62nd birthday, Oct. 10.
Jonathan L'Ecuyer can be reached at jlecuyer@gloucestertimes.com.
