knack for finding a message in a bottle

These are just two of the 40 bottles with messages inside that Clint Buffington has discovered.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Since 2007, Clint Buffington has found 40 bottles with messages inside
• When Buffington's hunt for a message ends, his hunt for its sender begins
• The Turks and Caicos islands are a "flotsam magnet," where Buffington found his first bottle

(CNN) -- Your chances of finding a message in a bottle are about the same as your chances of finding a golden ticket in a Wonka bar. Most people would be astounded to find just one.
Clint Buffington has found 40.
The self-styled Message in a Bottle Hunter, Buffington chanced upon his first bottled message while hiking a beach in the Turks and Caicos in 2007. An "intense awareness that something very important was happening" seized him, then he saw an orange paper glinting inside a blue wine bottle.
Fresh off his fourth trip to the island chain, the teacher from Kentucky now has more whale mail than some have snail mail.
His oldest message was cast into the sea about a half-century ago. "Return it to 419 Ocean Boulevard (illegible) and resieve (sic) a reward of $150 from Tina, owner of Beachcomber," reads the note from the late owner of the Beachcomber Motel in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. The owner had died, but her