VIRGINIA KEY, Fla. – The Castaways Against Cancer has launched on its annual mission to raise awareness in support of American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life.
The group left Saturday morning from Virginia Key in route to Key West. It’s a 160 mile journey that will take seven days to complete.
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“I don’t know, you feel like you’re making the world one percent better,” said founder Steven O’Brien. O’Brien said he lost both his mother and grandmother to cancer. He founded the group nearly two decades ago, paddling his kayak in every journey through the last 19 years.
Cancer survivor, Bob Linfors said he’s been on the trip 10 times since beating cancer 13 years ago, but this year he saw the group off on their journey. He said the physical pain of kayaking, is all to relieve the real pain cancer patients are experiencing.
“For someone who has gone through it, when you sit in that chemo room and you get a slow drip for four hours – there’s a lot of pain involved in that,” Linfors said. “What these guys are doing is they’re raising awareness to the fact that while they’re going to go through some physical pain, they’re trying to replace the pain people are going through with chemo, radiation, [with] all the losses they have to go through.”
“We’re going to beat cancer, you can quote me on that,” O’Brien said.
You can learn more about the group, track them or donate, click here.