A message-in-a-bottle mystery: From Ireland to Wildwood with love, Aoife. But who was Aoife?

Just about everyone’s heard of messages in bottles cast into the sea. Few people have actually found one, let alone learned who sent it.

But a little over a week ago, Frank and Karen Bolger and their granddaughter Autumn Pokrywka, 13, discovered a bottle with a message stuffed inside lying in a clump of seaweed on a North Wildwood beach.

“Greetings from Ireland,” the note in the bottle began.

It was signed by someone named Aoife and dated four summers ago.

But the Bolgers weren’t content to leave it at that.

With the help of Wildwood Sun by the Sea Magazine’s editor and publisher Dorothy McMonagle Kulisek and lots of social media action, the improbable actually came to pass: not only was this trans-Atlantic mystery solved, but the Bolgers and the note’s writer actually got to meet by phone on Friday.

“It’s just been an amazing story,” said Frank Bolger, 58.

Call it fate. Call it the luck of the Irish. This story has plenty of both.

Nearly two weeks ago, the Bolgers were taking a walk on the beach by 14th Street in North Wildwood to pick up trash and the like before settling in for a relaxing day of sun and surf. That’s when Karen, 62, noticed that a tiny bottle nestled in seaweed by the water’s edge had some paper stuffed inside. When they got it home, it took a tweezer to pull out the note stuffed in it.

This is what they saw:

Greetings from Ireland. I have thrown this bottle into the sea for someone to find another day. Maybe it’s travelled down to Africa or up to Iceland! I won’t know if someone found it, but I hope it is found.

It was signed Aoife — no last name, no town — and dated July 17, 2019.

As fate and luck would have it, the little bottle from Ireland managed to wash up in a South Jersey Shore town with lots of Irish Americans with Ireland connections. Even Frank Bolger’s ancestors emigrated from the Emerald Isle in the 1860s.

The Bolgers, who have a summer home in West Wildwood and a winter residence in Bellmawr, shared their story with Kulisek, who posted it on her publication’s Facebook page.

“I saw people starting to tag all the Aoifes they knew, and it started to go over the internet and it went viral,” said Kulisek, 62.

Frank, meanwhile, shared it with IrishCentral.com, a North American online Irish news site. That got the word out to the media in Ireland. A search for the mystery Aoife began on both sides of the proverbial pond.

Then last Thursday, Martin Byrne of Bray, County Wicklow, was watching the TV when one report caught his attention: Some Americans in New Jersey found a bottle with a message written by someone named Aoife from Ireland. He called to his daughter, who was known to do that kind of thing, to check it out. The report included an email.

That same day in Wildwood, Frank received an email from someone named Aoife who said she had sent the bottle.

“We were skeptical,” Frank admitted. “You know, Philly attitude. You figure someone’s pranking us.”

So they asked her to send them a note in her own handwriting. She did. And they knew they had their Aoife.

On Friday, the Bolgers and Aoife Byrne and her father got to meet via speaker call. They hit it off right away. By the end of the chat, Aoife’s father had extended the Bolgers’ an open invitation to the Byrne home.

Aoife, 33, a musician and writer, told them she likes to go to the sea for inspiration. She’s also a fan of Sting and the Police song “Message in A Bottle.” That’s how her bottle started its adventure.

“I am a songwriter, and I was writing something that day,” Aoife explained in an email to The Inquirer. “I decided to go a bit further in the hope someone somewhere would find it. I never expected it would end up in the U.S. I’ve always wanted to visit the U.S.”

And her bottle’s journey to Wildwood had to be a very long one, even from Ireland. Bray is near Dublin, all the way on the east coast of Ireland.

“I am absolutely over the moon that Mr. Bolger and his family have found it,” Aoife said. “I think the world needs a little more joy and hope.”

If there wasn’t enough irony here to go around, Bray is pretty much an Irish version of Wildwood. A longtime seaside resort favored by families, it has a sandy beach, with amusement rides and arcades — or funfairs, as they say in Ireland. And as Frank said, “Wildwood is probably the most Irish beach town on the New Jersey coast.”

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind for all concerned — lots of media attention and lots of internet love for a story with a seemingly impossible storybook ending.

“After 20 years, I must admit this story has been the best story so far,” said Kulisek, who started her magazine in 2004.

For the Bolgers, it’s been quite an adventure, but Frank, who has his own engraving business, said the best part is how much good feeling the story has brought to so many people.

“After the last three or four years, people are looking for hope, some good,” he said. “I’m so glad she brought some joy into the world.”