An Allenwood resident?s message in a bottle made it to foreign shores two years after he tossed it overboard.

Avid fisherman Captain Dean Kuehnen has a new pen pal in France after he threw a bottle into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Carolina in July 2005. Incredibly, the bottle made it all the way across the ocean to a French beach on the small island of Ile De Re.

Alain Bonneau found the bottle and mailed Kuehnen right away. He was able to contact him because of the letter that Kuehnen sealed inside a bag in the corked and taped bottle. It listed the date and his contact information inside. A local French newspaper wrote an article about the message in a bottle finding its way across the Atlantic.

Kuehnen says he plans to get a translator and write back to Bonneau. He also hopes to visit one day. Kuehnen has been sending out his messages in a bottles for the past 10 years, but this is the first one to be found.