SULLIVANS ISLAND, S.C. (AP) – Addie Devine found a pen pal after she put a message in a bottle and tossed it into the sea along the Maine coast last summer.

And now the bottle is being used to ferry a sort of seagoing chain letter.

Addie, who is 8-years-old and lives in Cumberland tossed the bottle into the Atlantic near Maine’s Acadia National Park last July.

Mike Rumph found the corked wine bottle last month in the pluff mud behind his Sullivans Island house and found two notes inside.

“Hello, who ever gets this note, please write back. This note comes from the Saddleback Island cabin … Hope you get this,” said Addie’s note, written July 6, 2002. It included her address and the names of her parents, Suzette and John Devine.

The second note was from Kristine and Charlie Perry of Jacksonville, Fla., who found the bottle last August as they were boating near Deer Island off the Maine coast.

Kristine Perry said they thought Addie’s note was cute and, on their way back to Florida, added a second note asking whoever found the bottle to write. They tossed the bottle overboard about three miles off the South Carolina coast last Sept. 15.

The Rumphs called both the Devines and the Perrys to tell them they found the bottle. And the youngest of the Rumphs’ three daughters, 7-year-old Abby, wrote Addie Devine and included some drawings of her pets.

She recently got a letter back in which Addie told about her family, her dog named Hinckley, her fish named Golden and chipmunks named Fat Louie and Jerky.

John Devine said it’s fitting the message in the bottle was found. He noted it was written at a cabin on an island with no electricity, telephones or running water where his family vacations each summer.

“It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” Addie Devine said. “I never thought anyone would ever get my note.”


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