blared: lost-boat

Lost at sea By Deborah Bach on May 5th, 2009 Jure Sterk, 72, was lost at sea while circumnavigating the globe. 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 boats sails were in tatters, its hull coated with marine growth. It had obviously been empty for some time. 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 boats 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 hed 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. Its always heartbreaking to hear about a fellow sailor lost at sea. Heres to Jure Sterk. I can only hope that he went out the way he wanted to, doing what he loved best.