Bermuda nine years ago has finally floated ashore -- in Ireland.

And another message in a bottle found in Tobacco Bay by concessionaire Mr.

Kenny Bascome may help to unravel some of the mysteries of the Gulf Stream.

The Associated Press yesterday reported that Heather Dickgiesser dropped a message in a bottle off her cruise ship when she was nine years old in 1984.

In February, Irishman Tadgh Flynn found the bottle among the seaweed on Stradbally Beach on Ireland's south coast.

Mr. Flynn sent Heather a letter in February notifying her that he had found her bottle. He enclosed her original message, rendered almost illegible by water seepage. Only the name and address were readable.

"I'm just so amazed,'' said Heather, now a senior at Amity Regional Senior High School. "Think of everything the bottle must have gone through to get there. There are so many things that could have gone wrong. It's a one-in-a-million chance, and it happened to me.'' Mr. Bascome's bottle was put out to sea by a Florida man carrying out experiments on the Gulf Stream.

Mr. Bascome is now trying to contact Mr. Robert Morgan in Miami to inform him that he found his bottle, number 2,647.

The message in the bottle read: "I'm making a study of the current flow of the Gulf Stream.

"Since 1970 I have been dropping bottles in the Straits of Florida while en route from Miami to Bimini in the Bahamas.

"The Gulf Stream current flows between Florida and the Bahamas which are only 50 miles apart. It flows northward then east across the Atlantic Ocean and eventually back to our shores.

"Bottles are dropped starting 15 miles offshore and approximately a mile apart. Each bottle is numbered and a record is kept of the date and location it is set adrift.'' MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE -- Mr. Kenny Bascome with the note he found in a bottle in Tobacco Bay.