Dutch sailors Maarten Kater and Marianne Den Ouden returned to their boat on Friday bearing an extra passenger: newborn Matias.
Matias, the couple’s second son, arrived Thursday about 6 a.m. after about three hours of labour.
Coming from European parents, he measures a very metric 3,640 grams and 51 centimetres in length (eight pounds and 20 inches).
Kater, a 32-year-old physicist, and Den Ouden, 33, a glaciologist, are just over three years into a round-the-world sailing trip that’s taken them from their home in Holland to England, down Africa, around South America into the Pacific, up to Alaska and down to Victoria, where they have been since October.
Along the way, the couple started their family. Their first son, Daniel, was born 21 months ago in Chile.
The couple aren’t sure when they will leave Victoria. They are considering having their 12-metre sailboat, the Pinta, taken across North America by truck so they can sail to the Atlantic via the Great Lakes.
