Taylor Swift has written a letter to two Galway women who sang her songs as they were lost in the Atlantic ocean for 15 hours. 

Cousins Ellen Glynn and Sara Feeney were 17 and 23 when they spent 15 hours drifting in the Atlantic last August.

Ms Glynn, who is now 18, had been paddleboarding for several years before she almost lost her life along with her cousin, who took up the activity that summer.

On the night in question, the girls took off at around 9.30pm for a short spin on their inflatable paddleboards as Sara’s mother Helen walked her dog.

However, what the cousins didn't realise was that a northerly breeze turned north-easterly and gained in strength, so their inflatable boards were acting like sails.

They tried to paddle back but they couldn’t and they had no means of communication, so they secured their boards together and tried to stay positive.

Fifteen hours later they were found by father and son fishermen Patrick and Morgan Oliver clinging to a buoy 4km south of Inis Oírr - 27km from where they set off paddleboarding on Furbo Beach.

Throughout the ordeal, the women survived wild seas, freezing cold, thunder, lightning and torrential rain - much of it in the pitch darkness of Galway Bay.

On RTÉ’s Documentary On One Miracle in Galway Bay, which airs on RTÉ Radio 1 tonight at 6pm, the young girls said that while drifting in the ocean singing Taylor Swift songs kept them going.

Ms Glynn said after the ordeal the US pop star sent her a letter to say how moved she was by their ordeal.

The 17-year-old said she repeatedly sang one Taylor Swift song in particular, called Exile.

"I’d say at first Sara thought I was insane, but then she started singing along and it was a bit of a distraction,” Ms Glynn said.

She also revealed that Taylor Swift has written the pair a letter and sent her a painting after hearing about their incredible ordeal.

Ms Feeney said there’s a lot of stages of processing what happened to them.

“Sometimes I just want to talk it out, and I’m so lucky that there’s amazing people around me that I have there to listen,” she said.

"And then other times you just feel like ‘no, that wasn’t me, that never happened’, and it’s just trying to find the balance and getting back to normal.”