“In science, you can’t just sit there and talk about it,” Schambach said. “My students have learned that if you throw a bottle on the beach, it’ll come right back. The reason this works is we put it in the Gulf Stream current.”

The bottles take 14 to 26 months to arrive on the other side of the ocean after Schambach’s friend, Capt. Ken Upton, drops them into the current about 40 miles off the coast of Wrightsville Beach.

Laura’s bottle took 15 months to complete a distance roughly as far as Winston-Salem to Juneau, Alaska.

She said she was shocked that the glass bottle survived the trip. Coincidentally, she will be taking her first trip to Ireland this summer to celebrate her grandparents’ anniversary.

“I sent her (Patten) a letter in the mail a couple days ago. I told her ‘You found my bottle’ and gave her my information, so she can write me back,” Laura said. “It’s kind of crazy. I’m super excited.”

According to a drift bottle project based out of the Institute of Ocean Sciences Canada, only about one out of every 25 bottles dropped into a current are found with the majority sinking, being buried in the sand or washing up in remote areas.