Three young Maine students say their messages in a bottle traveled about 2,971 miles from the Bahamas to the Portuguese island of Santa Maria in the Azores.

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The Castine students, seventh-grader Dustin Colson and sixth-graders Liam Griffith and Hannah Flood, said they put their messages in the bottle as part of an Adams School project two years ago and gave it and their classmates' bottles to Randy Flood, Hannah's father, who dropped them off the Bahamas while setting weather buoys with his ship, the Argo, in March 2008, the Bangor (Maine) Daily News reported Thursday.

Jim Cabral of Hudson, Mass., who was visiting the Azores on an annual trip with his family, said he found the bottle on the shore of Sao Lourenco Bay in July.

Cheryl McFadden, a teacher at Adams School, said the bottle traveled the farthest distance of any of the school's bottles recovered thus far. However, she said many of the bottles are still on the loose in the ocean.