Woman's message in a bottle to late father travels from Massachusetts to France
PROVINCETOWN - A message in a bottle made it from the tip of Massachusetts to the shores of France. The note turned out to be a letter from a local woman to her late father.
"He was my first love of course, even though I do love my husband now," smiles Jodi Lin Thomas, the author of the letter. "I loved going to work with my dad on Sundays and jumping the boats. He was my hero."
Thomas lost her father Tommy in 2021. He had been battling heart issues for a few years. Tommy was a pilot boat captain in New Bedford and helped to usher bigger boats through a canal. He asked Jodi to take his boat out one last time after he died. He wanted her to take it to a special spot where the two of them used to interact from the sea.
"He would call me from his boat when he would go out with a pilot ship, " remembers Thomas. "I had a special flashlight because he could see me, and I could see him out of my window. I can see the harbor from my home."
It's there that she tossed a weighted message in a bottle into the ocean. It sank to the ocean floor. Months later, she did the same thing when they spread his ashes in Provincetown. Only this time, the bottle was set adrift. In a video of the sendoff, Thomas can be heard jokingly saying, "Maybe you will make it to Portugal." The country is where his ancestors are from.
The bottle didn't make it to Portugal. It washed up on the shores of Gironde in France. It was discovered by a history teacher named John Rouchoud.
"There was something inside with writing. I brought it home and opened it. There was a letter written in English. It was a daughter writing to her late father," said Rouchoud. "The letter had been strongly sealed with the help of paraffin which kept the letter intact on its 6000 km journey across the ocean."
The contents of the message helped him track Jodi down on social media.
"I debated with myself and my wife over the opportunity try to contact the original [writer]. I got the impression from the sender that the father was in heaven," said Rouchoud. "I wondered if she was really expecting a reply, and how was she going to take the fact that we had found her?"
"He said, 'I am the gentleman that found your message.' I said, 'Oh, here we go. A new year, new scams,'" laughs Thomas believing it was ruse. "He sends me a picture of the bottle, and I had to pull over. I saw, and said, 'Alright this is legit."
The two have kept in touch ever since, and they are hoping for a future meet up in France or in Massachusetts.
"I believe in signs. I believe in spirituality. It went there for a reason," said Thomas, believing her father had something to do with its travel. "Hey kid, I am watching you for sure."
