Even as a teenager, John Beattie felt drawn to the ocean, but it was 25 years before his dreams of sailing the globe in his 35-foot yacht Warrior Queen could begin to come true. His voyage began in England and continued to the South American coast and into the depths of the rainforests via uncharted tributaries. The adventure reached a stirring climax during his return voyage from Venezuela. One day at dawn, hundreds of miles from land, he spotted a man dying of thirst aboard a drifting open boat, a man given one last slender chance to live.