Message in a bottle

I always find it fun to read about messages in a bottle being found. When I was a kid I sent many messages in bottles but never received a reply. The first one Richard sent got a reply. How weird is that? Not long after that happened there was a mail strike and Richard couldn't send his weekly letter to his grandparents who were on Gabriola Island at the time. We were living in Victoria. He suggested we send them a message in a bottle. I think he was about five or six at the time and wasn't really persueded by my explanation that messages in bottles arriving at their destination were not something that happened very often.

From CNN: "WILDWOOD, New Jersey (WPVI) -- It reads like a movie script: a woman writes a message in a bottle and sends it off to sea in Ireland. A New Jersey man and his family found the message while picking up trash on the beach in Wildwood. It took exactly 1,500 days, but on Friday morning, the message sender and the bottle finder finally found each other."