A Challenge That Put Wind in His Sails

-- John Atkisson from aboard Kestrel

* * *

Back at his home on Capitol Hill, Atkisson has been surprised and strangely moved by how closely friends and acquaintances followed his voyage, which he documented through e-mails and letters and on his Web site http://Kestrelboat.com, and how much it seems to mean to them. He realizes now he's been sailing, in a way, for all those who never leave the dock.

Almost every sailor dreams of crossing an ocean someday, he notes, but by age 64 the dream for him was an imperative -- one of these days you're going to wake up dead.

"And at 66 I've done it, which puts me in a very exclusive little club," Atkisson says. "Am I proud of that? Hell, yes!"

But he also continued sailing, he says, for Adrian O'Donovan, his Irish friend who died of liver cancer.

"He was a little tiny guy, like a leprechaun, really. He was the first person I met on the dock in Crosshaven, and against all the odds he was almost exactly my age, and like me had hit the bottle hard for many years before giving it up.

"But what was really extraordinary about him is that boozers like me tend to be moody and get down on ourselves, even after we stop drinking. Adrian found delight in everything. He lived in a little tiny house and had a little tiny boat, had almost no money and had seen very little of the world. But he saw everything in positive terms, particularly messing about in boats. One day when I was feeling down, he looked at me with this big grin, hit me on the knee and exclaimed, 'Johnno, isn't it great we can do this stuff?!' And that put everything in perspective."

Atkisson mounted Adrian's motto on Kestrel's radio during the voyage. He says it's there to stay.