'CANE YOU BELIEVE!
NJ 'Sandy' sign washes up in France
A New Jersey Realtor whose “for sale” sign was washed out to sea by Hurricane Sandy — and found last month on a beach in France — compared the discovery to finding desert-island treasure.
“It’s like a message in a bottle!” Diane Turton, founder of the Jersey Shore real-estate firm Diane Turton Realtors, told The Post on Friday. “It’s almost unheard of.”
A broker at the company had stuck the $80 sign in front of a four-bedroom waterfront colonial home next to Debbies Creek in Brielle not long before the storm struck in 2012.
When a gust of wind swept the sign out to sea that Oct. 29, the com- pany replaced it with another — and figured the old one was lost forever.
But more than five years later, on May 18, a stranger contacted the firm. Hannes Frank, a computer programmer from Brussels, Belgium, had stumbled on the faded sign broken in two on a beach in Bordeaux, France — about 3,600 miles away — he said in an e-mail, which included photos.
“Our first reaction was, ‘We need to verify this,’ ” said broker Perry Beneduce, 60, who listed the $600,000 property in 2012.
He and other workers confirmed the location of the photo, then contacted an oceanographer to ask if the sign’s supposed incredible journey was even possible, based on water currents, accord- ing to Beneduce.
“We found out it was. It was all true,” he said. “We learned the sign actually took [a similar] route as Christopher Columbus!”
He added, “It’s amazing. And refreshing that [Frank] took the time to contact us.”
The agency knows it’s the same sign from the Brielle house, which is located at 608 Cedarcrest Drive, because they recognized its design from around 2012, Beneduce said.
They then checked more of their records and learned it was the only waterfront-property sign that had gone missing during that time period.
Turton, who lost three offices to damages from Hurricane Sandy, said she now plans to fly overseas to meet Frank in person.
“When I tell people about it, they go, ‘No! You’re kidding!’ ” she said.