Lost at sea
May 5 2009 in On the Rocks by Deborah Bach
The seattlepi.com has a fascinating, haunting blog post and photos from a Seattle-based NOAA researcher onboard the research vessel Roger Revelle, which was enroute from South Africa to Australia last week when it came across an empty sailboat drifting on the Indian Ocean. The boat’s sails were in tatters, its hull coated with marine growth. It had obviously been empty for some time.
The Lunatic Piran, discovered off the coast of Australia in late April.
The writer, whose blog post was an email to his sister, reacted the way any sailor would, faced with what was obviously the aftermath of a tragedy. “It made me very sad to see her like that. It was just so emotional to see her, to be faced with what must have been some sort of tragedy at sea,” he wrote. ”I felt, and still feel, like I did when I saw a man get hit by a car while crossing the street.”
According to news reports, the boat’s skipper was a 72-year-old from Slovenia named Jure Sterk who set off from New Zealand in October 2007 in his 30-foot boat, Lunatic Piran, hoping to make history as both the oldest man to circumnavigate the globe nonstop and in the smallest boat without an engine.
Apparently he’d left New Zealand and sailed east, rounding Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, and was on the last leg back to New Zealand when he was lost. This is a photo of Sterk, courtesy of website waponline.it:
Commentors responding to the blog post include several people who knew Sterk and described him as an unassuming and well-respected sailor, a philosopher and adventurer who had circumnavigated before and written four books about his experiences.
The responses are a reminder of what a tightly-knit community sailors are, united by a shared passion and an understanding of the very real risks inherent in that pursuit. It’s always heartbreaking to hear about a fellow sailor lost at sea.
Here’s to Jure Sterk. I can only hope that he went out the way he wanted to, doing what he loved best.
Gail said on May 15, 2009
I just read this today. The last “comment” was a post dated 5/13/09 – just two days ago – from the lost sailor’s son. The original blogger, Sr. Patricia, observes that posting this account was the most important thing she’s ever done. Worth a read all the way to the end.