A message in a bottle has finally arrived -- eight years after two 12-year-old girls, Charlaine and Claudia from Montreal, launched it across the Atlantic.

Oisin Millea, a nine-year-old boy in the village of Passage East in Waterford, found the bottle while looking for treasure on the beach near his home.

It was inside a 7 Up plastic bottle, dry and completely intact despite its long voyage of over 3,000 miles. The bottle sailed out of Quebec, past Newfoundland, across the Atlantic, and up the River Suir estuary before ending up in Passage East.

The “message dans une bouteille” was written in French, dated June 2004, and sent by the two girls when they were on vacation that June.

Oisin’s mother, Aoife Millea, told the Montreal Gazette they had gone to the beach after a storm, “My son was over looking around — hundreds of bits and pieces were washed up on the beach,” she said.

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“He found it on the beach in Passage, by the little old castle there, on the grassy bank.

“We are always down there and the kids just potter around. He found it and opened it himself and then he ran over because it was in French. He was very excited.

“My French is useless,” Aoife said. “Thank God for Google Translate.”

The original handwritten text, reads:

“06/2004.

"Hello, we are two girls who had the idea to launch a bottle into the sea. We are called Charlaine and Claudia. We are both 12 and we live in Montreal. We are on vacation in the Gaspésie, in the village of Grande Vallée. We had the idea to launch a bottle into the sea because we saw a TV show about young people putting messages in bottles. If you find our bottle, tell us when and how you found our bottle. Also tell us your name, age, place of residence. Example: Paris, Miami, etc .... To contact us write to us at: [email protected]

To finish, if you don’t have Internet, go to a friend’s or go to an Internet café because we are very curious to know if our bottle was found.

On Monday, Oisin’s class was investigating Grande Vallée online.

The local teacher also helped to translate the French message and the Montreal Gazzette now reports that one of the girls, now aged 20, has been in contact with them.

“He would like for himself to be able to tell the girls that he found it,” Aoife said. “He feels the need to tell them that he has this letter. We will see what happens.”

And Oisin will  keep the note.

“He has a frame already — that’s our job for tonight,” Aoife said. “It is like his treasure now. He’s over the moon. We have the bottle kept as well. I don’t think he’s ever going to let it go.”

Let’s hope that when he does find Charlaine and Claudia, they don’t want it back.

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