First Turk to sail around the world dies at 87

Boro died in hospital in the Marmaris district of the Aegean province of Muğla, where he was being treated for cancer, on June 5. 

Boro, who was born in 1928 in Istanbul, earned his title as the first Turkish circumnavigator after completing his world tour in 1968, together with his wife, Oda Boro, a German citizen. 

The couple started their journey around the world on Aug. 22, 1965 in a 10.5-meter-long sailing boat called “Kısmet” (Fortune). Their cat “Miço” (Ship Boy) joined them along the way on the Canary Islands, and they returned to their starting point, Istanbul, after 34.5 months at sea. 

Boro spent his childhood and youth in Istanbul’s Caddebostan neighborhood on the Marmara Sea coast, and he got his first rowing boat during his high-school years. 

Although Boro was the first Turk to sail around the world, this was not his first oversees navigation. Along with a British sailor he conducted his first open sea journey in 1952, crossing the Atlantic in an 11-meter-long sailing boat called “Ling.” 

The Boro family, together with their daughter Deniz (Sea), who was eight years old at the time, also travelled the eastern shores of the American continent between 1977 and 1979. 

Boro later donated the boat “Kısmet” to the Rahmi Koç Museum in Istanbul, which specializes in the history of transport, industry and communications. Rahmi Koç himself is also among the Turks who have circumnavigated the globe. 

Boro wrote about his trip around the world for daily Hürriyet at the time, and these pieces were in 1969 compiled and published in a very popular book “Pupa Yelken” (Full Sail). 

In the 1980s Boro settled in the Aegean gulf of Gökova, which is known for its idyllic coasts full of forests and turquoise sea. In his later life he became known as a passionate defender of nature. 

In the area’s Okluk Bay, Boro had a sculpture of a mermaid made, which was then placed in the middle of the bay. The shield of the mermaid carries the following words written by the late Boro: “This mermaid has traveled many seas and horizons to find the heaven that she dreamed of… She traveled continents, islands and bays… Until she reached Gökova.”