DATE: Wednesday, October 1, 1997            TAG: 9710010486

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: HATTERAS ISLAND                   LENGTH:   67 lines

BOTTLE THROWN INTO THE SEA BRINGS A SURPRISED REPLY FROM IRELAND

Their message was simple - and so was the form of overseas communication.

``Hi, we just got engaged,'' the note in the bottle said.

But it took the complexities of cyberspace to link the Virginia couple with the German students who recently found their corked champagne bottle adrift near the shores of Ireland.

The missive had crossed an entire ocean, spent three years tossed by winds and waves and traveled more than 4,500 miles.

``We'd given up on anyone ever finding it,'' Tanya Stack, 28, said Tuesday. ``But we never forgot about that note - or the night we threw it into the ocean.''

Tanya and Joe Stack first got together in Ireland during the summer of 1990. She had just graduated from the University of Virginia. He was visiting his sister.

Four years later, Joe invited Tanya to the Outer Banks. He was going to teach her how to fish. So the couple drove four hours from Alexandria, Va., and booked a room in Kill Devil Hills.

On Nov. 4, 1994, Joe taught Tanya to tie knots. They baited their hooks and threw them into the Atlantic. Tanya was trying to land a bluefish.

Instead, Joe caught a bride.

``I'd taken all the weights and sinkers off my line when she wasn't looking and tied the ring on the end,'' said Joe, now 36. ``Then I told her to reel it in - real quick. I didn't want some stupid fish to eat that rock I'd spent two months' salary on.''

Tanya decided Joe was a keeper. The couple ate a quick dinner, then returned to their room, where a bottle of champagne was waiting.

``We took the champagne to the beach and sat on the shore to drink it,'' Tanya said. ``I said we should write a note and stick it inside - we were so excited to tell someone. So we scribbled something short on a piece of hotel notepaper, shoved it in and recorked the bottle. We put in a dollar bill, to pay for postage in case someone found it. And we wrote Joe's address on the bottom of the note.''

The couple returned to Ireland for their honeymoon three months later.

On Sept. 15, 1997, a group of German students, on the coast of Ireland to study English, walked along Rinmore Beach.

There they saw a dark green bottle bobbing in the waves.

Joe and Tanya's note, scrawled in blue ballpoint pen, was intact.

There was no date on the Stacks' note - so its finders had no idea how long it had been afloat.

``We thought maybe they never even got married,'' said John McAteer, an Irish newspaper editor who lives next to the house the students were renting.

McActeer's small newspaper had just gotten onto the Internet in July. So - tipped off by the hotel stationery - he sent a message to an Outer Banks bulletin board.

A week later, a Hatteras Island Realtor saw McAteer's posting. Tom Hranicka ran Joe Stack's name through the Internet's address directory. He came up with an address and phone number and e-mailed them back to McAteer.

McAteer called Stack on Sept. 22. ``I was absolutely thrilled to have found him,'' the Irish newspaper editor said.

The following afternoon, Hranicka found that the couple had booked a cottage with his Outer Beaches Realty Co. for the next week. The Stacks arrived in Avon Sunday. Hranicka gave them a bottle of champagne - and Joe says they'll send another message before they leave. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Joe and Tanya Stack are back visiting the Outer Banks where they put

a note in a champagne bottle three years ago. It turned up on an

Irish beach two weeks ago.

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