Struth! Just gone fishing … for 13 years

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says while plenty of bottles have been re-united with those who’ve tossed them overboard from ships many years before, in Canada a family’s been re-united with their 6m half-cabin fishing boat that was blown out to sea in a storm an amazing thirteen years ago.

And despite presumably drifting around the Arctic’s waters and possibly beaching-up on occasion over all that time, remarkably it was found to be in almost near-perfect working order.

Members of the Evaluarjuk family on the Melville Peninsula of Canada’s far north, had taken the boat on a caribou-hunting trip in 2000, and while camped overnight the small vessel had been blown out to sea during a sudden fierce storm; after a fruitless search, it was written off as lost forever.

But last year polar bear researchers saw something shining on an uninhabited Arctic island, and on investigating found it was a 6m half-cabin fishing boat. They reported their find, and on hearing of it the Evaluarjuk’s sought to go in search, but were thwarted by the onset of the 2012 northern winter.

Then finally just last month they got to the remote island, and found that it was indeed their boat – and that its hull, steering equipment and even motors were in near-perfect condition after all those years, the only real damage some windows smashed-in by, they believe, inquisitive polar bears.

                                                 

Photo:

ELIJAH Evaluarjuk re-united with his family’s fishing boat that had gone missing off far northern Canada for 13 years. (Photo: courtesy Evaluarjuk family.)