Sadun Boro, the first Turk to sail across the globe, has passed away at the age of 87.

Istanbul-born Boro, who had been receiving treatment for bladder cancer, was taken into intensive care on June 2 in Marmaris – a coastal district in Turkey’s southwestern Mugla province. He died on Friday morning.

Having made a transoceanic odyssey from the U.K. to the Caribbean with an English companion in 1952, Boro set out to sail across the world with his wife Oda and their cat Mico in 1965 onboard their boat named Kismet.

The journey took three years and the couple followed a route which included Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands, Indonesia and the Red Sea.

Boro later donated Kismet to Istanbul’s Rahmi Koc Museum which specializes in the history of transport, industry and communications.

The couple had one daughter named Deniz – ‘sea’ in Turkish (AA).

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