Support local journalism. Unlock unlimited digital access to floridatoday.com Click here and subscribe today.

Bobbing in the sea, the green wine bottle slowly floated up the Florida coastline, carrying the dreams and frustrations of a Cuban R&B-pop singer who doubted she could ever perform in the United States.

In July 2017, feeling heartbroken and lonely, 25-year-old Chila Lynn wrote an emotional prayer asking for musical success on a sheet of notebook paper.

Lynn put her written prayer in a plastic bag, sealed it with a cork inside the bottle, and tossed it into the sea at a church in Havana's Nuevo Vedado neighborhood.

After a roughly 400-mile oceanic odyssey, her message in a bottle washed safely ashore months later near Indialantic — while Hurricane Irma's pummeling waves were battering the Space Coast.

2017 story:Indialantic woman finds Spanish message in bottle on beach during Hurricane Irma

More:From Mediterranean food to a speakeasy, here are 5 new restaurants to try in downtown Melbourne

That heartfelt letter — penned in Spanish to Yemayá, an Afro-Cuban water goddess — triggered an unlikely chain of events that Lynn considers an answer to her prayer. Five years later, her framed message is displayed on a dining room wall inside El Ambia Cubano in downtown Melbourne.

And Friday, Lynn walked into the restaurant for the first time and held and reread her letter, wiping away tears — the afternoon before her long-awaited American singing debut.

“I'm just kind of holding it in. Everything I felt when I wrote it came back to me," Lynn said, holding her letter.

Lynn will sing and play piano during a meet-and-greet at 7 p.m. Saturday at El Ambia Cubano — her first performance in the United States.

She will be accompanied on guitar by Alfredo Hernandez, the restaurant owner who contacted her in 2017 in Cuba after an employee and his girlfriend discovered her message in a bottle on the beach. Hernandez offered to help Lynn book gigs in the U.S.

“This is the welcome party for Chila in the United States. It seemed like it was a dream in 2017," Hernandez said.

Lynn arrived in the U.S. last month on an open-ended basis to pursue her musical career, bolstered by a new manager and producer. She said she has preliminarily been booked to sing at miniFEST events in Houston (June 23), Austin (June 26) and Tampa at The Orpheum (June 30), and she plans to release her new single "Unleash Mode" on July 1. 

“It’s mind-blowing,” Lynn said.

"I came to the States planning a strategy and everything. And I feel so grateful because I’ve overcome a lot of things — and I'm finally here. I feel really grateful for it. Everything that is happening to me right now, it's like a movie," she said.

Born in Havana with dual Spanish citizenship, Lynn is a classically trained pianist and singer who started writing songs at age 13. Her debut album "Real Woman" was released in 2012 by EMI Music Spain, and her second album "Amor y Miel" was released in 2016 on a Cuban label. 

Lynn considers the voyage of her message in a bottle "a miracle."

Her message is dated July 22, 2017. When she wrote it, she said she felt like she was trapped "in an alley with no exit." She sealed the letter inside a empty bottle of white wine she had shared with a friend during a pasta dinner the previous night.

"I’m fighting, mother, tooth and nail to be able to realize my dreams, you know that more than anything in the world I long to succeed with my music," Lynn's message said.

"I’m an artist, you know, since I opened my eyes, music lives in me and I’m putting everything into it and then some in order to be ever closer to getting to the top and make my dreams come true," her message continued.

"I’ve had many obstacles, my heart has been broken a ton of times. I lost the roof over my head and almost my way, but I’m trying to get back my house, my direction and my progress," the message said.

Lynn, standing alongside her grandmother, threw the bottle into the sea at Our Lady of Regla, a historic seaside church in Nuevo Vedado. She recalled that her grandmother feared that a fisherman in the harbor would open the bottle and learn her intimate thoughts.

Less than two months later, Nikki Snow and her then-boyfriend, Allen Gibson, discovered Lynn's message in a bottle on Sept. 10, 2017, on the sand just north of DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Melbourne Beach Oceanfront. They were shooting Snapchat and Facebook Live videos on the beach amid Irma's gusts. 

Gibson was working as chef and kitchen manager at El Ambia Cubano. He showed the letter to Hernandez, who is a Cuban native who defected in 1994.

Hernandez contacted Lynn — who initially became upset because she thought someone in Cuba was playing a prank on her. He also placed her letter on display in his dining room alongside his small altar to Ochún, the Cuban Virgin of Charity.

Snow and Gibson married in March 2020. Both now work for L3Harris Technologies, and they live in Satellite Beach.

“It's something you always think of as a kid, right? Like, ‘Oh, I'm going to find something super cool on the beach’ — and then you find a message in a bottle. Pretty unique," Nikki Gibson said.

FLORIDA TODAY interviewed Lynn by phone in 2017 after her bottle washed ashore, and she said she dreamed of someday performing in the United States. She now hopes to secure an American record deal.

"Everything that bottle has had to have been through ... it's kind of meeting an old friend, you know?" Lynn said.

“I really want to do music and make great friends along the way. I want to collab with all the artists I always dreamed about that are from here. My biggest dream is to travel the world and release music from here. And, I don't know: Maybe Grammys in one or two years? That could be really my dream come true," she said.

“Now that I'm here, I want to make my bottle proud. Because I think I can do it justice. You know, that trip must have been so difficult," she said.

"And now that I'm here, I've got to be the best I can be."

Chila Lynn will sing and play piano during her American debut performance at 7 p.m. Saturday at El Ambia Cubano.

The restaurant address is 950 Melbourne Ave. in downtown Melbourne.

Rick Neale is the South Brevard Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more of his stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @RickNeale1

Support local journalism. Subscribe today.