A Rockport man has received a response from the message in a bottle he threw into the ocean nine years ago.
Max Vredenburgh, now a 19-year-old sophomore at Suffolk University, says he vividly remembers putting the letter into a wine bottle and throwing it into the water at Long Beach in Rockport when he was ten years old.
Nine years later, a certain “G. Dubois” found the bottle washed up on a beach in Southern France. “According to your date, August 21, 2009, it will have taken 9 years to cover the 6000 kms that separates us,” Dubois wrote in the letter. “You had grown a lot during that time: 10 to 19 years old.” Dubois included a map to show where exactly he found the bottle.
“Whoever is reading this letter please write back,” reads Vrendenburgh’s original message. “I like apples, I like the beach, my favorite color’s blue, I like animals, I like cars, and I like outer space.”
On Friday, November 8, Vrendenburgh’s father texted him pictures of his original 9-year-old letter and the response from his French pen pal. “I am mind blown,” Vrendenburgh said in his Twitter post about the letter, which has gathered well over 500,000 likes and 100,000 retweets as of Tuesday morning.
On August 21, 2010 I threw a message in a bottle into the ocean from a beach in Rockport, MA. On October 10, 2019 that letter was found on the beach in France. I am mind blown. 9 years. pic.twitter.com/Af2tEwoQtq
— māx (@VredenburghMax) November 8, 2019