Our origins
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Lutz Tischendorf has been a sponsor of the Northern Magic Fund since 2008. Lutz moved from Germany to Ottawa in 1997 with his family and became aware of the voyage of the Northern Magic through Diane Stuemer’s weekly reports in the Ottawa Citizen. Lutz was always intrigued and inspired by this voyage, but also touched by the poverty the Stuemer family encountered in different parts of the world. After a sponsorship with World Vision ended in 2009, Lutz was looking for an alternative to help less fortunate kids with a more direct impact and less administrative overhead. Supporting the Northern Magic Fund was the logical consequence. In 2014 Lutz met George Ouma and his newly wed wile Florence on their honeymoon trip to Ottawa. This encounter left a profound impact on Lutz and he decided to become more involved. Lutz joined the Board of Directors in March 2016 and is looking forward to join Herbert at this trip to Kenya this summer. |
| Karla Narraway is a local small business owner who hopes to help the NMF in any way she can. Famine, in this eastern area of Africa, is in the news daily and education is often the first casualty in regions that are stressed for funds generally. Like many Ottawa area people, Karla really enjoyed and connected with the Stuemers’ adventures through the weekly articles provided in the Citizen. Karla has fundraising and event planning expertise (for local community efforts) to offer the Fund and its Board. She hopes to contribute by helping to raise the profile of this organization, especially for the 10th anniversary of the charity, and to create more stable ongoing funding for a small charity filling a big need in Eastern Africa. |
| Keltie Donohue joined the Board of Directors of the Northern Magic Fund for International Development in 2010. Keltie followed the Stuemer’s voyage closely through the regular updates published in the Ottawa Citizen and was there in August 2001 at Petrie Island to welcome the family home.Her interest in the Northern Magic Fund developed through her husband’s role as Director and Treasurer of the Fund from 2002 to 2010.Keltie’s commitment to volunteer work goes back a long way. For example, she co-chaired the Terry Fox Elementary School’s Greening Committee in Orleans, served up meals at the Shepherd’s of Good Hope in Ottawa, hosted many families from across Canada as part of the National Capital Commission’s “Celebrate Canada in the Capital” program, and helped to raise funds for KIN Canada and Cystic Fibrosis. Professionally, Keltie heads up an organizational effectiveness team in a federal crown corporation. She has served in a variety of functions including internal audit, finance, and planning and performance management. Keltie holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo and is a Certified Management Accountant. |
| Diane King is the Secretary with the Northern Magic Fund. Diane is also one of our founding Directors. Diane is a facilitator, trainer and consultant with the Intersol Group. She works on projects ranging from change and transition management, team building and development, facilitated learning, strategic planning, facilitating focus groups and meetings, management coaching to designing and developing courseware in collaboration with her clients. Diane visited Kilifi in March, 2008, with her husband. Diane met with Andrew and visited two of the Northern Magic School renovations. She saw first hand the fact that there is so much to do, but felt heartened nonetheless by seeing so many students sitting at desks provided by the Northern Magic Fund! | |
| She also met some of the students that we are sponsoring as well as spent some time with George Ouma, our medical student. Diane also met Boniface and Hamisi, the two young boys (now men) who were the inspiration for the Fund. (you can read about them in Diane Stuemer’s book, The Adventures of the Northern Magic). Diane came back from Africa with a true appreciation for the difference the Fund is making in Kilifi. We may not be able to help everyone, and we may only be a small fund, but the difference we are making to the students we are able to help, through the sponsorships and the renovations, is immeasurable. |
| In 1994, Herbert Stuemer was the co-owner of a successful advertising business, living a normal suburban life with his wife and three children. But everything changed after he had a serious accident, and his wife Diane, was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, a potentially fatal skin cancer. Soon the couple embarked on a re-evaluation of their priorities and a search for a way to live life more fully. In 1997 they sold their business, rented out their home, took their three sons, then aged 5, 9 and 11 out of school, and set out on an ambitious four-year plan to navigate around the world by sailboat. Their entire sailing experience at the time consisted of six afternoons of sailing on the Ottawa River on a 23-foot boat. When they departed Ottawa in September of 1997, the Stuemers had never even once sailed Northern Magic, the 42-foot, 39-year-old steel ketch they had purchased and refitted for the world-circling voyage. This is a story of a family who made a decision to live life with passion and let nothing stand in the way of their great dream. As they learned how to sail and cope with life at sea on a cramped and tiny boat, they overcame many obstacles – including two deadly storms in which other boats and lives were lost, a close encounter with waterspout, a lightning strike, an arrest at gunpoint, surgery in Sri Lanka, pirates, the terrorist bombing of an American naval destroyer in Yemen, dysentery in Sudan, and a difficult crossing of the stormy North Atlantic. Yet at the same time they found new closeness as a family and a profound realization about their role in the world. | |
| During the voyage, Diane wrote weekly dispatches for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, generating more response from the public than any series in the paper’s history. When the Stuemers began getting involved with local people – finding a teacher for a small island in the South Pacific, helping volunteer veterinarians care for endangered orangutans in Borneo, and providing school fees for poor African village children – readers from all over North America began to participate as well. By the time the family returned to Ottawa, in August of 2001, more than 3000 people lined the shores of the Ottawa River to welcome them home. Shortly after they returned home from their trip, Diane started the Fund with two other friends, Karen Hooper and Diane King, in 2002. Sadly, Diane passed away in 2003, a recurrence of her melanoma and Herbert stepped in as President. Herbert is passionate about carrying home the message of how ordinary people can achieve great dreams and make a difference in the world. He continues to remain involved and raise funds for their two projects in Indonesia and Kenya. |
| A neighbour, dear friend and avid follower of the adventures of the late Diane Stuemer and her family, Karen was honoured when Diane asked her to join the Board of Directors of the Northern Magic Fund. Karen was privileged to have had an opportunity to travel to Kilifi, Kenya in 2003 to visit many of the local schools, attend an opening ceremony at the newly renovated Majaoni Primary School and to witness first-hand the difference the Fund is making in this little part of our world. | |
| Enjoying her role as Student Sponsor Coordinator, it has been Karen’s pleasure to participate in the growth of the Fund from its humble beginnings with only a dozen or so students and one school renovation to its current status in Kilifi District with five completed primary school renovations, approximately 150 secondary school students each year and approximately 20 students who have continued their studies with a University education including two who now have their Medical degree. |
Northern Magic sailboat sold in South America
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The most famous sailboat in Ottawa has been sold in South America.
The Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel ketch that took the Stuemer family around the world, was sold last year in Brazil to a French buyer.
Family patriarch Herbert Stuemer said he resolved to sell the sailboat after spending Christmas alone on The Northern Magic several years ago. “It was an easy decision,” he says. “It was time.”
Stuemer sailed from the Mediterranean to Brazil with a crew before walking away from the boat for the last time. He doesn’t know where it’s now anchored.
The Stuemers — Herbert, Diane and their children, Michael, Jonathan and Christopher — set out on an around-the-world odyssey in The Northern Magic in 2007 shortly after Diane was diagnosed with cancer. Diane filed weekly columns to the Citizen describing the journey, which took them to 34 countries. When the Stuemers sailed home in August 2001, thousands crowded Petrie Island to welcome them.
Diane Stuemer died in March 2003, less than two years after completing the 65,000-kilometre ocean journey. She was 43.
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The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey Hardcover – October 15, 2002
- Print length 376 pages
- Language English
- Publisher McClelland & Stewart
- Publication date October 15, 2002
- Dimensions 6.84 x 1.35 x 9.8 inches
- ISBN-10 0771082606
- ISBN-13 978-0771082603
- See all details
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- Publisher : McClelland & Stewart (October 15, 2002)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 376 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0771082606
- ISBN-13 : 978-0771082603
- Item Weight : 1.8 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.84 x 1.35 x 9.8 inches
- #1,861 in Sailing (Books)
- #8,995 in Travelogues & Travel Essays
- #13,001 in Adventure Travel (Books)
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- 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 82% 11% 7% 0% 0% 82%
- 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 82% 11% 7% 0% 0% 11%
- 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 82% 11% 7% 0% 0% 7%
- 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 82% 11% 7% 0% 0% 0%
- 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 82% 11% 7% 0% 0% 0%
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Customers say
Customers find the book incredible, amazing, and enjoyable. They also mention it's one of the best books on circumnavigation with kids. Readers praise the writing quality as well-written and easy to read.
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Customers find the book incredible, amazing, and enjoyable. They say it's one of the best books on circumnavigation with kids. Readers also mention it'll expose them to things that change their lives.
"...Great book and amazing story . Wish the keep traveling." Read more
"Simply one of the best books on circumnavigation with kids. Getting a tiny bit dated, but Diane is a very good writer...." Read more
"...Enjoyable book about danger, exploration , humanity, helpful friends and people around the world." Read more
" Incredible journey with lots of adventure ..." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book very well-written and easy to read. They also mention the book is full of short adventures of a family who gave up the rat race for a while.
"...Getting a tiny bit dated, but Diane is a very good writer . Wish I'd been able to read the rest of her story that her editor suggested she cut out...." Read more
"This book is what real adventure books should be. Very well written , it feels like you are right there in the sailboat with them...." Read more
"... Easy read full of short adventures of a family who gave up the rat race for a while to circumnavigate the world in a sturdy yet older sailboat and..." Read more
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Northern Magic, a famous circumnavigator, found abandoned and aground on Uruguay reef
Ottawa Citizen. By Bruce Deachman.
Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel, twin-masted sailboat that most famously carried Ottawa’s Stuemer 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.”
Clark said in an email Monday the Port Authority had told him the boat had lost its mooring lines during a storm and drifted onto the rocks. It was lying on its port side due to a puncture in the hull from a sharp rock, which resulted in the boat taking on water.
The owner was apparently waiting for a higher tide to float the boat and mend the damage.
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COMMENTS
Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel, twin-masted sailboat that most famously carried Ottawa’s Stuemer family on a four-year, 65,000-kilometre circumnavigation of the globe, now lies...
As they learned how to sail and cope with life at sea on a cramped and tiny boat, they overcame many obstacles – including two deadly storms in which other boats and lives were lost, a close encounter with waterspout, a lightning strike, an arrest at gunpoint, surgery in Sri Lanka, pirates, the terrorist bombing of an American naval destroyer ...
The most famous sailboat in Ottawa has been sold in South America. The Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel ketch that took the Stuemer family around the world, was sold last year in Brazil to a...
Dodge waterspouts and lightning strikes and witness the bombing of the USS Cole. See the staggering beauty of Borneo’s rainforest, and its destruction from logging. Be arrested at gunpoint and entertained like visiting royalty. In all, they would visit 34 countries and cover 35,000 nautical miles.
After learning the ropes on a 23-foot sailboat on the Ottawa River, the couple purchased a well-proven but inexpensive 42-foot bluewater cruising yacht which they named the Northern Magic. Over the next 11 months, they prepared the boat – and themselves – to circumnavigate the globe.
See the staggering beauty of Borneo’s rainforest, and its destruction from logging. Be arrested at gunpoint and entertained like visiting royalty. In all, they would visit 34 countries and cover 35,000 nautical miles. Almost everywhere they went, the family made lasting friendships.
See the staggering beauty of Borneo’s rainforest, and its destruction from logging. Be arrested at gunpoint and entertained like visiting royalty. In all, they would visit 34 countries and cover...
Their entire sailing experience consisted of six afternoons on the Ottawa River. Over the next four years, squeezed into quarters no bigger than the Stuemers’ old bedroom, the family of five would become seasoned mariners.
Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel, twin-masted sailboat that most famously carried Ottawa’s Stuemer 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.
Northern Magic, the 42-foot steel, twin-masted sailboat that most famously carried Ottawa’s Stuemer 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.