PALMETTO BAY, Fla. (WSVN) — It was a message in a bottle from a South Florida girl that took two years to finally reach someone — all the way across the Atlantic.
The message, written by 9-year-old Summer Smyth, was thrown into the ocean between Miami and the Bahamas. It ended up crossing the pond via the Gulf Stream before washing up on a beach in Normandy, France.
“It was amazing that it didn’t break,” said Smyth.
Smyth, a Palmetto Bay resident, was in the second grade when she tossed the bottle with her note on Aug. 7, 2015.
On it she wrote: “If you get this note, my name is Summer Smyth, my last name is Smyth, and I’m going to second grade and my school is St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School.”
Another side of the letter started off with “Greetings from America” and included contact information for anyone who found it. There was even a faded but still visible drawing of the American flag.
“The flag that Alex and I drew on it, and it wore off because it was crayon,” said Smyth.
The bottle was found at a beachside campsite in Northern France, covered in mussels. The people who found it used the contact information on the letter to contact Smyth’s nanny, who helped her write the note and send it off.
Smyth’s mother, Sherrie Smyth, described how those who found the letter contacted her daughter’s nanny. “Lo and behold, two years later, my nanny, whose note was in there as well, had a phone number on it,” she said. “Somebody from Normandy, France, reached out to her. She in turn texted me, and it’s kind of taken a life of its own since [Monday], when I posted it on Facebook.”
As to whether the writer of this message in a bottle thinks she’ll ever send another one, she replied “probably.”
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