This is really cool - this guy stared down death and then sailed around the world. Reminds me of Duke.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/10/1 ... ailor.html
Transplant patient sails solo around world
Last Updated: Thursday, October 19, 2006 | 5:34 PM ET
CBC News
A 71-year-old Minnesotan, believed to be the first heart and kidney transplant patient to sail solo around the world, pulled up to a dock in California Thursday where his voyage began 17½ months earlier.
As he made shore in San Diego, Ardell Lien was greeted by his wife, Maureen, his sister, his two cardiologists from Minnesota's Mayo Clinic and other organ recipients and donor families.
"It's a relief to be back," Lien told reporters. "I wanted to show people that you can still live life after an operation like mine and I think I've done that.
"You don't just have to sit in an armchair and take your medication."
Lien received his transplants in 2003 as he was near death from congestive heart failure.
He decided to undertake the trip to raise awareness of the critical need for organ donations and to try to boost the number of registered donors.
In May 2005, he cast off from the dock in San Diego Bay on his 31,310-nautical mile odyssey, stopping in Hawaii before heading south to American Samoa and on to Fiji and Australia.
He sailed his nine-metre boat Catalyst across the Indian Ocean, rounded Africa's Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Atlantic and passed through the Panama Canal, returning to San Diego via Hawaii.
"He represents the triumph of the human spirit," said Dr. Brooks Edwards, one of the cardiologists who treated Lien.
"He's done precisely what we want our patients to do after transplantation — to get back in the fast lane and continue the activities that are important to them," Edwards told the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
"Every patient I know that I've told this story to — well, their eyes just light up," he said. "They realize the impossible isn't always impossible."
Lien returned to the United States twice during his voyage, once when his doctors asked him to fly to the Mayo Clinic for his annual checkup and again in December for a three-week vacation.
His wife also linked up with him three times to deliver supplies of his anti-rejection medication.
Maureen Lien told the San Diego Union Tribune that her husband had originally invited her to join him on the trip, but she declined.
"Are you kidding me? I didn't get a new heart," she said. "This old heart of mine couldn't take it."
The couple plan to head to their hometown Caledonia for several weeks of rest before returning to San Diego to take the boat out of the water and begin making repairs.
Man 1 - Death 0
Moderators: sky's the limit, sepia, Sulako, lilfssister, North Shore
