Two Wexford boys made a surprising discovery on their local beach when they found a message in a bottle that had spent the last year-and-a-half travelling 4,800km across the Atlantic Ocean!
Cousins Cian and Tiarnan O’Grady, above, both 15, came across the bottle while beachcombing on Cullenstown Strand, near Wellington Bridge, in the wake of Storm Frank on Jan 2. They were looking for driftwood for their gran.
Since then, they have gone global! Cian joined Neil Delamere on the Anton Savage Show from his school, Good Counsel College in New Ross where he was meant to be doing PE to tell Neil what happened after the boys made their discovery.
The message was written on July 25, 2014 by Ken and Suzanne Baker, from Scituate, a coastal town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts - often referred to as the most Irish town in America.
As the lads found out, the Bakers have thrown over 200 handwritten messages in bottles into the Atlantic Ocean over last 3 years. This was the first to make it this far.
We then caught up with Ken Baker to tell us his side of the story
There were a number of quirky coincidences about the story, not least the fact that Mrs Baker’s maiden name is Grady meaning the message that crossed the Atlantic was placed in the sea in America by a Grady and recovered from the sea in Ireland by an O’Grady!
The original story was broken by Brendan Keane in the New Ross Echo and was picked up nationally and internationally!
The Bakers have bought the O’Gradys American Lotto tickets for the record-breaking Powerball Lotto which has a jackpot $1.5 BILLION so the O’Grady’s might have lots of reasons to thank their new American chums!
