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Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel, twin-masted sailboat that most famously carried Ottawa’s Steumer family on a four-year, 65,000-kilometre circumnavigation of the globe, now lies grounded on Uruguay’s rocky coastline, only six metres or so from the shore, its U.S. flag in tatters, its owner nowhere in sight.
The boat was spotted almost a week ago by Roderick Clark, who is vacationing in Punta del Este in southern Uruguay, a six-hour drive from Pelotas, Brazil, where he lives and operates a bed-and-breakfast.
“I went for a walk on the beach last Tuesday,” he said, “and saw this boat beached on the rocks. She’s totally abandoned, tilting on her starboard side, her flag tattered and torn. She’s in a pretty sad state.”
Clark noted that he was last in the area in November, and the boat wasn’t there then, so it has spent, at most, about a month on the rocks. It appears to currently be moored on the rocks, but didn’t, he added, appear to be about to drift anywhere soon. “She’s stuck on the rocks. She’s not going anywhere.”
After 12 days of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the Azores, the Steumer family arrives in Canso, N.S. in July 2001, nearly four years after they left Canada in their quest to circumnavigate the globe.
Northern Magic captivated the imaginations of Citizen readers when the Steumer family — Herbert and Diane, and their three sons, Michael, Jonathan and Christopher, ages 5 to 11 — set out in 1997 to sail around the world. The journey was inspired in part by a cancer diagnosis that Diane had received. Their previous experience sailing only amounted to a half-dozen outings on the Ottawa River in a 23-foot sailboat.
Diane documented the four-year, 34-country expedition in weekly columns published in the Citizen, and later in a book, titled The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey. Upon their return to Ottawa, in 2001, the Steumers were greeted at Petrie Island by 3,000 well-wishers. Diane died 18 months later.
Herbert is president of the Northern Magic Fund for International Development, which aims to eliminate poverty by providing free access to basic education. Its current efforts are focused on the Kilifi area of Kenya.
He said Monday he was last aboard Northern Magic in the winter of 2012-13, when he sailed from the Mediterranean to Brazil. “I came back (to Ottawa) in January or February after a health scare and then sold it quickly to a Frenchman, from France, in 2013.”
Herbert later heard that the boat sold again, about a year later, to a Brit. “She was an old boat,” he notes of the 55-year-old ketch, “and in need of repair.
“But what happened after I sold it, I really couldn’t say. I was done with it. I was done sailing.”
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
The boat was spotted almost a week ago by Roderick Clark, who is vacationing in Punta del Este in southern Uruguay, a six-hour drive from Pelotas, Brazil, where he lives and operates a bed-and-breakfast.
“I went for a walk on the beach last Tuesday,” he said, “and saw this boat beached on the rocks. She’s totally abandoned, tilting on her starboard side, her flag tattered and torn. She’s in a pretty sad state.”
Clark noted that he was last in the area in November, and the boat wasn’t there then, so it has spent, at most, about a month on the rocks. It appears to currently be moored on the rocks, but didn’t, he added, appear to be about to drift anywhere soon. “She’s stuck on the rocks. She’s not going anywhere.”
After 12 days of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the Azores, the Steumer family arrives in Canso, N.S. in July 2001, nearly four years after they left Canada in their quest to circumnavigate the globe.
Northern Magic captivated the imaginations of Citizen readers when the Steumer family — Herbert and Diane, and their three sons, Michael, Jonathan and Christopher, ages 5 to 11 — set out in 1997 to sail around the world. The journey was inspired in part by a cancer diagnosis that Diane had received. Their previous experience sailing only amounted to a half-dozen outings on the Ottawa River in a 23-foot sailboat.
Diane documented the four-year, 34-country expedition in weekly columns published in the Citizen, and later in a book, titled The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey. Upon their return to Ottawa, in 2001, the Steumers were greeted at Petrie Island by 3,000 well-wishers. Diane died 18 months later.
Herbert is president of the Northern Magic Fund for International Development, which aims to eliminate poverty by providing free access to basic education. Its current efforts are focused on the Kilifi area of Kenya.
He said Monday he was last aboard Northern Magic in the winter of 2012-13, when he sailed from the Mediterranean to Brazil. “I came back (to Ottawa) in January or February after a health scare and then sold it quickly to a Frenchman, from France, in 2013.”
Herbert later heard that the boat sold again, about a year later, to a Brit. “She was an old boat,” he notes of the 55-year-old ketch, “and in need of repair.
“But what happened after I sold it, I really couldn’t say. I was done with it. I was done sailing.”
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
