Geoff Holt’s 2024 circumnavigation of Great Britain is the latest feat in a lifetime devoted to sharing the joy of being at sea.
From the breezy way that Geoff tells his life story now, the swimming accident that took his mobility at just 18 years old seems like more of a speed bump for the mariner than a brick wall. He’d completed three transatlantic crossings before his 19th birthday and had every reason to look forward to a long career on the water. He certainly got it, though maybe not quite in the way he was expecting. It took eight difficult years for him to get back out there after his injury, but when he returned to the sea, it was with a vengeance.
The year after Geoff’s accident, a sailor named Mike Strahle invented a fixed aluminum “trapseat” for the Hobie 16 that made the sporty little catamaran sailable by someone who couldn’t move about the boat. It was a game changer for Geoff.
“You’d sit on a wing outside of the Hobie cat. It was chaos; it was pioneering,” he remembers. “You had to pick your side, port or starboard, before you went, because once you’re in it, you couldn’t move. But you could sail with another member of crew. So when you were up in the wind, to windward it was lovely…and then you tacked.”
“I had a couple of really great years of doing that before getting more into the political side of sailing,” he remembers, becoming an advocate for disabled sailors and heavily involved with the British Paralympic Association and the Royal Yachting Association. His organization, Sailability, worked with clubs to implement accessible sailing programs. “We started with two or three—literally just two or three— clubs because this was territory where no one had ever been before,” he recalls. “By the time I left, it was 50 or 60 clubs.” Today, Sailability programs are in over 200 clubs across the UK, with many more worldwide.
In his own life, Geoff had moved on from Hobie Cats to Challenger Trimarans. In the tri, sailors sit in the central hull and control things via just a few lines and a tiller, making them possible to sail solo for people with reduced mobility. “I can’t use my hands very well because of my disability, so there was a lot of wrapping the main sheet around and pulling it with my teeth.”
With the switch to the Challenger came a new goal for Geoff. He planned a circumnavigation of the Isle of Wight, an eight-hour, 60-mile trek. “I enjoyed it so much, and I wasn’t worn out by it. I wasn’t ill, I wasn’t cold. I was tired, but that’s it. The pressure on my body was OK. After eight hours, absolutely fine.”
“It was almost a light-bulb moment at that point that if I could sail 60 miles in eight hours and get a good night’s sleep, I could do it again the next day. And then again the next day. And that’s when my Round Britain idea came together: my personal Everest.”
Photo: Alan Simpson
The dream took 10 years to put together, including gathering an eight-person support crew and three motor homes, a support RIB, and more. His wife, Elaine, and their then 5-year-old son drove a wheelchair-accessible camper and met him each night. “It was one of the most amazing things I have ever done or will do. One thousand miles, 109 days, 51 harbors. And that was the whole inspiration for what we did this spring with (his organization) Wetwheels.”
Geoff continued to use his time on the water to inspire and inform his advocacy. After the transatlantic crossing in 2010, he was awarded the UK’s Yachtsman of the Year, and later he would be recognized with an MBE (membership in The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire presented by Queen Elizabeth) for his services to disabled sailing.
He was writing for Yachts and Yachting at the time and mentioned in one of his columns that his dream to bring accessible boating to more people could use a different approach, namely by making the leap from sail to power.
“I talked about the various powerboat options that there are and that a Cheetah catamaran would be the ideal boat for this. At the end of it I used the sentence, ‘My choice would be the Cheetah, but I always did have champagne tastes and lemonade pockets.’”
“And then three weeks later, the managing director phoned me up and said, ‘Thanks for that lovely glowing article. Delighted to help. How do you know you can’t afford it?’”
Cheetah helped him figure out the details, and other brands like Suzuki and Raymarine got on board, donating engines and electronics to the project. Still, even with the discounted Cheetah and donated equipment, it was going to cost around 200,000 pounds (about $260,000) to get up and running.
“I spoke to my wife, and I said, ‘This will work. I know it will work. You have to trust me. We need to mortgage our house and, she just said, ‘Alright, if you know what you’re doing,’ and I said, ‘We’ll get the money back. The moment we get the money back, I’ll pay it all back.’ So we bought the boat, and sure enough, it was everything I wanted it to be. It was fully booked within the first three or four months.”
And so the Wetwheels Foundation was born, expanding access to the water through “safe, barrier-free, and enriching experiences.” In the charity’s mission statement is a commitment to offering “a unique opportunity for disabled and disadvantaged people of all ages—including those with multiple, profound, and complex impairments—to access the water…helping to broaden aspirations, increase confidence and directly impact health and wellbeing.”
Within five years, Geoff had added two more accessible Cheetahs, complete with ramps to the steering position and adapted steering controls, to the fleet. On the Wetwheels boats, everyone is given an opportunity at the helm, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities. There is a professional standing by to manage the throttles, but otherwise the guest is the captain.
“For a moment in time, that person is not being told they can’t do something, but that they can. That person, however old or whatever disability they have, they are a captain of a powerboat that’s worth a quarter of a million pounds. They’re in charge, steering the course.”
Whether they want to go fast, look for marine life, or just enjoy time out on the water, guests on the Wetwheels boats choose their own adventure. It’s one activity where families don’t have to worry about access, where they can all do something together and know with 100-percent certainty that their loved one with a disability will be able to not just get around safely, but participate fully as well. Each boat’s crew is trained in disability awareness and how to manage the intensely emotional side of the job.
“I’d like to think that that’s partly because I, as a founder with quite a severe disability, wouldn’t tolerate anything other than complete respect. That’s why moms and dads come, because we don’t ask inappropriate questions, we don’t judge, and we’re all equal on the boat.”
Even for guests with reduced ability to participate, Geoff says it’s a sensory experience, with the sights and sounds of the water all around. “It’s helped me understand what it is about the water that I’ve found special over the years. It makes you feel alive, it’s special. It’s independence, it’s the spray in your face.”
“But so what? That’s the question you need to be able to answer when you’re fundraising. There’s no application that I’ve ever done that doesn’t ask for impact and outcomes. But what’s the outcome of this? The outcome is that a 14-year-old child who’s having chemotherapy or end-of-life care comes out on the water with scared eyes, but when you go fast, gets a big grin and holds his mum’s hand a little tighter. I don’t want to be too emotional about it, but what’s the impact of that? How am I going to put that on paper?”
“I tell the crew there are no tears on my boat, we can cry on our own time, but little Johnny or whoever doesn’t want to see tears. It sounds harsh, but we’re all parents, my son is 22 now, and we’re all human beings. It can be hard.”
To date, Wetwheels has run trips for over 80,000 people from eight bases around the UK. They have worked with everyone from kids with profound and complex impairments to elderly people with dementia. The demand is huge, and Geoff says they will need to continue to expand to serve everyone.
This spring he and two other crew members set off on a second circumnavigation of Great Britain, this time to raise funds for and awareness about their next phase of expansion, which aims to create three new locations and add four boats to the fleet. They set out on May 13 from London, starting under the Tower Bridge. “It was quite a spectacular departure. The Mayor of London came to see us off.”
Instead of a 15-foot sailboat, this time he took one of Wetwheels’ own Cheetahs and drove it for 25 days to complete the voyage, bringing many guests along for the ride. He dubbed the journey “Finishing the Dream.” Along the way, they stopped in 17 different ports and were able to show off the boat and its mission to countless communities.
The journey raised a quarter of their 300,000 pound ($393,000) goal for the next phase of the project. It also started some really good conversations about funding along the way, Geoff recalls. He’s optimistic that they will have secured half of their goal within the next 12 months. Then it’s onto the next goal of 1.2 million, which will allow them to set up bases in Wales, Northern Ireland, and East Anglia.
“We’ve been talking about this entirely within the scope of the UK, but I certainly believe there’s a place for this overseas as well. We actually went to Galveston, Texas, because they’ve got a center for disabled veterans. So we went out there to talk to yacht clubs about our model and how we think they could do it too.”
“That’s my wish, to take this international, and maybe I’ll get that one day, but right now, I’ve got enough on my plate just making sure it all still works in the UK.”
Running an organization like this is more than a full-time job, but it’s Geoff’s calling. Through the alchemy of sheer grit and true passion, he turned a personal tragedy into joy and freedom for tens of thousands of people through Wetwheels, Sailability, and Paralympic programs, and has inspired countless others with his boundary pushing solo adventures. There is no truer embodiment of the phrase where there’s a will, there’s a way. ρ
For more on Wetwheels or to contribute to Geoff’s vision for accessible boating for all, visit wetwheelsfoundation.org.
