The great appeal of sending a message in a bottle out to sea is the mystery: once adrift in the ocean, the message could end up anywhere, in any corner of the earth.
Such was the case for one 14-year-old Maine girl, who was surprised to receive a response to her message in a bottle some three years after she first put it to sea – from a fisherman in Spain.
“I hope you are as thrilled to receive this letter as I was when I found your bottle,” the handwritten note reads. “…And I hope we’ll receive more answers when I return the bottle to the sea.”
Terra Gallo and her younger sister, Nola, were visiting their aunt in Monhegan, Maine three years ago when their mother, Susan, suggested they send out some messages in green glass bottles.
READ MORE: World’s oldest message in a bottle discovered in Germany after 108 years at sea
The first response came just a few months later, from someone in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Years passed, and Terra forgot all about the floating messages they sent out that day.
Until last Thursday, when Terra received a letter from a fisherman, named Iuaki, who found her bottle off the Spanish coast.
“I think it’s really cool,” Terra told WCSH-6 News in Maine.
“At first, we were really surprised, wow, all the way to Spain, and when we looked at ocean current then it made sense that it went that way.”
The letter was mailed directly to Terra, but the excitement her message generated may not be over yet. In her original letter three years ago, Terra asked whomever found the bottle to add a note of their own and throw it back – something Iuaki said he has done.