Message in a bottle follows little girl home from Bermuda

A few days before she returned home to Massachusetts from a cruise near Bermuda, 8 year old Meagan Bilodeau dropped a message in a bottle into the ocean, hoping for a new penpal.

Meagan wanted the bottle to find her a cool new penpal, and it did. 11-year-old Teddy Herrick fished the bottle out of the water and read the message inside:

“I always wished someone would find my bottle if I sent one. If found, would you kindly write back to me? Please? Please? Please?” the letter read.

It was early June when the bottle was sent, and Teddy found the message in late July. The girls are excited to be penpals, but they could just hang out in person. In its under-two-months long journey, the bottle was recovered by the second girl less than twenty miles from Meagan’s Falmouth, MA home.

CNN spoke to a pro about the probable travel trajectory for the bottle:

The most likely path for the bottle would have been to or near the United Kingdom, but an eddy could have broken it away from the Gulf Stream, allowing it to float to Massachusetts, said Jenifer Clark, a satellite oceanographer who works for her own company in Maryland after years of employment with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.