Topic: Glass Float Found in the Pacific Ocean Between Washington and Hawaii

[maddoggmatt]

Hi all, new member here.

I found a float two weeks ago sailing from Washington State to Hawaii. If you draw a rhumb line from Neah Bay to Maui, I found it very close to halfway which is over 1100nm either direction of land. It was quite the ordeal to get onboard - 20 to 25knt winds and a building sea state.

The ball has a float line around the perimeter as if the two halves were moulded separately and then joined. Button seal on the bottom. No markings at all to be found. The top has an indentation and around that concave is a perfect crack. What I find most special about this, it is full of water. A few more inches of water and I can only imagine it would have sunk.

Please excuse my current lack of knowledge in relation to floats. Spent my life in, on and around the ocean but this is my first find.

Struggled uploading the images with the allowed file size. Apologies if these are hard to view.

Kindly asking if anyone could please help me ID the float - date and province would be much appreciated.

Best,
MD

[glassobsessed]

Welcome to the Glass Message Board MD.

Sounds like you did well to spot it let alone get the float on board in one piece! As you found it in the Pacific I understand that it most likely came from Japanese waters - I don't know if other countries in the region have used glass floats as well. As I understand it, European floats never make it that far unless via eBay...

Yours looks like a very large float but there is nothing else I can tell you about it except that the lines you can see on the surface come from the mold it was blown into - molds can be made of two or more parts. With some glassware the lines are polished away but that would be much less unlikely on a utilitarian object like this.

John

[Anne E.B.]

https://www.theglassmuseum.com/fishingfloats.htm
Lots of links and references at the bottom of the page.