Geoff Holt Paralyzed Sailor's Epic 1,445-Mile Atlantic Triumph

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Geoff Holt was 18 years old, working as a deckhand in the British Virgin Islands, about to become the youngest first mate on a charter yacht in the Caribbean. He ran down the beach at Cane Garden Bay, dived in, and hit a sandbar. In a single moment, he was paralysed from the chest down — a C5–6 spinal cord injury that would take away the use of his hands, his wrists, and everything below.
The career he'd spent his teenage years building at sea was gone.

What followed is one of the most quietly extraordinary comeback stories in British sailing. Geoff didn't just return to the water — he became the first quadriplegic to sail solo around Great Britain, the first to cross the Atlantic unassisted, and the Yachtsman of the Year — a title previously held by names like Dame Ellen MacArthur, Sir Ben Ainslie, and Sir Francis Chichester. He returned his
crossing finish to the exact bay where it all ended: Cane Garden Bay, 25 years later, as skipper of  a two-million-pound yacht.

This is a conversation about sailing, paralysis, the strange grace of the open ocean — and what it
actually takes to get back in the boat after you've lost everything.

Chapters

00:00 Paralysed at 18 — a sandbar in the British Virgin Islands
01:00 Who is Geoff Holt? Sailor, adventurer, founder of Wet Wheels
02:24 Growing up on the south coast — learning to sail at eight years old
04:46 Leaving school at 16 for the Mediterranean on a 60-foot ketch
07:09 Cane Garden Bay: the diving accident that changed everything
10:28 Getting back to life — retraining at Deloitte and meeting Elaine
13:17 First time back in a boat: 1991, a prototype dinghy and an uninvited BBC crew
15:30 Sailing around the Isle of Wight — the first post-injury challenge
17:43 Personal Everest: planning the solo circumnavigation of Great Britain
20:00 Day one capsize at the start line — face down for 30 seconds
22:23 Three weeks stuck in Aberystwyth — the Caledonian Canal decision
27:07 109 days, 51 harbours, and crossing the finish line
29:34 Impossible Dream — the fully wheelchair-accessible 60-foot catamaran
31:00 Crossing the Atlantic alone — 3,000 miles from the Canaries to the Caribbean
35:00 Yachtsman of the Year, the MBE, the Olympic torch, and the Deputy Lieutenancy
44:47 What is Wet Wheels — and why powerboating is the key to barrier-free boating
48:30 Building the fleet: from one boat in Portsmouth to eight around the UK
55:00 What's next: taking Wet Wheels anti-clockwise around Great Britain
57:00 Call to Adventure — get yourself near some blue space
58:00 Pay It Forward — Wet Wheels and the quiet joy of doing something good

What You'll Learn:
• What a C5–6 spinal cord injury actually means — and the slow, private reckoning of a teenager  who thought he was going to get better
• How a chance phone call, a prototype dinghy and an uninvited BBC crew put him back on the water  seven years after his accident
• The moment on day one of the Round Britain Challenge when he nearly drowned at the start line in   front of 300 people
• Why sailing 109 days around Great Britain felt like a greater achievement than a solo Atlantic  crossing — and the decision to cut through the Caledonian Canal rather than round Cape Wrath
• How Wet Wheels went from one £200,000 catamaran part-mortgaged against his house to a fleet of eight boats taking 12,000 people a year on the water around the UK
• Why every person who comes aboard Wet Wheels — even those who can't move their arms — gets the  chance to drive it

GEOFF HOLT MBE | Sailor, Public Speaker & Founder of Wet Wheels
Website: geoffholt.com
Wet Wheels: wetwheels.org
X (Twitter): @WetWheels
Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire; Freeman of the City of London; Yachtsman of the Year; MBE for
Services to Sailing, 2010

ABOUT GEOFF HOLT
Geoff Holt grew up sailing on the south coast of England, left school at 16 to work on charter yachts
in the Mediterranean, and by 18 had sailed the Atlantic three times. A diving accident at Cane Garden
Bay, Tortola, in 1984 left him paralysed from the chest down. After several years away from sailing, he returned in the early 1990s and went on to become the first quadriplegic to sail solo around Great Britain (2007) and the first to sail single-handed and unassisted across the Atlantic (2009). He was awarded an MBE for services to sailing in 2010 and named Yachtsman of the Year. He founded Wet
Wheels in 2011 — a fleet of fully accessible power catamarans designed to take disabled people of all ages out on the water around the UK. His next voyage: taking Wet Wheels itself around Great Britain.


For full show notes and links, visit: adventurediaries.com/go

Transcript

[00:00] GEOFF: broke my neck between the shoulder blades, C5–6, and I can't move my fingers. I've got a little bit of arm movement. I can't move my wrists. I've got a little bit of shoulder movement, but I'm paralysed effectively from the chest down. The narrative through my story has been boating. From day one, the moment I first got on a sailboat, all the way through till now, it's been boating, sailing and powerboating. And that's what I think makes me somehow feel more authentic.

[00:30] NARRATOR: Welcome to another episode of the Adventure Diaries. Today we have a truly remarkable guest — a guest with a lifelong passion for sailing who, despite being disabled from the waist down, has gone on to achieve some truly extraordinary things: sailing all around the United Kingdom, sailing single-handedly and unassisted across the Atlantic Ocean in what he calls his own personal Everest. He was awarded an MBE for services to disabled sailing and went on to be Yachtsman of the Year, proving that adventure really is a state of mind. In today's Call to Adventure you'll hear about the importance of blue space and how you can benefit from it, and in the Pay It Forward segment a fantastic way for people with complex and profound disabilities to get active on the water. Settle in and enjoy this conversation with Geoff Holt MBE.

[CHAPTER: Geoff Holt MBE — Who He Is — 01:00]

[01:00] CHRIS: Geoff Holt MBE, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?

[01:03] GEOFF: Good. Thanks for having me on. It's a real pleasure.

[01:06] CHRIS: Yeah, the pleasure's mine. Thank you again for giving up your time. So, it's a bit of a short introduction. I think you're a bit of a trailblazer, certainly in the sailing world. You've done some monumental things which we'll dive into — the first quadriplegic to sail solo around Britain, and then an incredible world record across the Atlantic as well. You've been recognised as Yachtsman of the Year, and there's some real incredible philanthropic endeavours with Wet Wheels, which I want to get into. But going back — where did your passion for sailing come from?

[CHAPTER: Early Life & Learning to Sail — 02:24]

[02:24] GEOFF: Well, I live down south — I live now on the water near Fareham, which is between Portsmouth and Southampton. I was actually born in Portsmouth with no sailing background from anyone in the family. My mum remarried when I was seven or eight, to a chap who had a small sailing boat. We went to live with them, and from the age of eight onwards it was weekends out on the water, sailing along the south coast of England, over to France. At the time, when you're young, you want to be out with your mates and not on a sailboat — so it's only retrospectively, looking back with rose-tinted spectacles, that I think, wasn't I lucky? But I do remember my bedroom window looked straight down the Hamble River, and from the age of seven or eight I would stare out of that window watching the yachts and boats coming and going. My head was filled with wonderment about where they were going, and I think it was only natural that as I grew up I'd have this kind of interest in adventure.

[02:58] CHRIS: Did you do any kind of expeditions or sail over to France when you were a kid?

[03:00] GEOFF: Yeah, we did quite a lot of sailing over to France. I remember in the summer of '76, the hot summer, we spent the summer in southern Ireland — and then the year after we spent the summer in Brittany. All the time, I'm 10 or 11 years old, but I'm learning skills I don't even know I'm learning: the terminology, how to feel the wind, how to navigate. My stepfather was really good at teaching, and I just lapped it up. It wasn't until I reached the age of 16, when I left school, that there were no real job prospects for me — and I was offered a job to jump on a charter yacht from the Hamble River and go to the Mediterranean for six months. So that's what I did.

[CHAPTER: From the Hamble to the Mediterranean at 16 — 04:46]

[04:46] GEOFF: I jumped on this 60-foot ketch, just me and the skipper. I was 16 years old. It was owned by the British Aluminium Company and they paid me £13 a week with free board and free food. I sailed to the Med with my captain and spent six months there learning, I guess, the hospitality trade. It was sailing, it was adventurous, but I was looking after people — washing, cleaning, taking them on trips, teaching them to windsurf and water-ski. And slowly, that was the path I was going to follow. I'm not saying I'm lazy, but I follow the path of least resistance quite often, and it was what I knew. I started to get a name for myself, people started to ask me to come and sail their boats, and off we went.

[05:20] CHRIS: That's incredible. So you just learned on the job — no formal courses, just learned on the ropes, as they say.

[05:25] GEOFF: Yeah. Between leaving school at 16 and turning 18, when something quite dramatic happened, in those two and a half years I sailed the Atlantic three times. In total, across other jobs, I was doing over 35,000 miles at sea. In those days, people asked for you by reputation: there's that young lad from England, a good yachtsman — we want him for this race or this transatlantic. That's how your career progressed. You couldn't do it now; you wouldn't get anywhere near a boat without a whole ream of certificates and CVs. And that's a good thing — we've particularly improved safety. But those were the days when you could just jump on a ship. I was living a bit of a charmed life, actually. I didn't really realise it at the time, but at 18 or 19, working in the British Virgin Islands on beautiful luxurious charter yachts — it wasn't a bad life.

[06:10] CHRIS: I'm just back from the British Virgin Islands, actually — some friends and I went sailing around the BVI. Incredible place.

[CHAPTER: The Accident: Diving into a Sandbar in the BVI — 07:09]

[07:09] GEOFF: Absolutely incredible. It was in the BVI that it all changed. It was on a beach called Cane Garden Bay on Tortola. I'd flown out, I was going to be the youngest first mate on a charter boat in the Virgin Islands. I signed all the paperwork, went round to Cane Garden Bay at lunchtime in my swimming trunks, ran down the beach, arms above my head, dived into the water — and bang. I hit my head on a sandbar. And from that moment onwards, that was — crikey — that was 39 years ago yesterday.

[08:05] GEOFF: I broke my neck between the shoulder blades, C5–6. I've got a little bit of arm movement, I can't move my wrists, I've got a little bit of shoulder movement, but I'm paralysed effectively from the chest down. That was quite a significant thing to happen to an 18-year-old lad. And you don't really realise, looking back, just how bad an injury it was. I just thought I was going to get better. Crazy.

[08:25] CHRIS: Without stirring up old wounds — how did that change your perspective on sailing?

[08:30] GEOFF: Well, bizarrely, when you're a teenager you feel invincible, don't you — it's never going to happen to you. If someone had said to me, Jeff, don't do it, I would have done it anyway, because you don't think anything bad will happen. They eventually flew me back to the UK. I was airlifted to Puerto Rico and eventually, a month later, flown back to Salisbury in Wiltshire where I started a year of rehab. It was only there that it really started to dawn on me how serious this was. You have that hope in the beginning — someone says if you get a twitch in your finger after three weeks you're going to walk again — and then three weeks becomes three months, and three months becomes three years, and before you know it life just moves on. You either lay around and dwell on it or you get on and do something. I did take it quite badly, privately. I thought that was it — there's no way in the world I can sail again. It was a bit like a bereavement: sailing wasn't just part of my life, it was my life. So I took a conscious decision to shut it out, and that would last many years.

[CHAPTER: Getting Back on the Water — Life After Hospital — 10:28]

[10:28] GEOFF: I eventually left hospital after a year. I left with my nurse, Elaine. Elaine and I have been together nearly 40 years now. We've been married 37 years this year. She was a couple of years older than me — I was 18 or 19. And back out into this big, tough world that wasn't going to do me any favours. I retrained in computing — bear in mind this is the mid-1980s — and I got a job with Deloitte as a database processor, working with computers. I ended up working for Deloitte for over 15 years and became head of marketing and business development.

[11:00] GEOFF: Then someone I knew before my accident, who happened to be disabled, phoned me one day and said she'd designed a new type of sailing dinghy — called a Trapezoid — that someone with my disability could sit in and hold the mainsheet with one arm and the tiller with the other. Out of friendship and loyalty to her, I agreed to at least try it. The BBC, without me knowing, had been invited to come and watch this yachtsman who'd broken his neck try to sail a boat for the first time. This was seven years after the accident, so it was quite daunting. I thought I would have forgotten how to sail. And they put me in the boat.

[CHAPTER: First Time Back in a Boat — 1991 — 13:17]

[13:17] GEOFF: I remember pulling in the mainsheet, the accelerator and the tiller in my hand, and feeling that little dinghy — it's only 15 feet — and I just thought, oh my God, I'm back. I realised: this is what I loved to do, and I was going to do my best to keep doing it. And little did I know then, in 1991 or 1992, what was going to happen. That first time was absolutely amazing.

[13:50] GEOFF: My wife had never seen me sail — she'd only ever seen photos. I'd been telling her I was this amazing yachtsman, even claiming I was an Olympic gold medallist at one point [laughs]. And she'd lifted me into the boat — she's only five foot tall, I'm six foot two — and she just whispered in my ear: "My God, I hope you know what you're doing." That didn't help my nerves at all. But that spray in the face, that wind across my face — that was like: I'm back. This is me. This is what I love. And there was no stopping me after that.

[CHAPTER: Sailing Around the Isle of Wight — The First Challenge — 15:30]

[15:30] CHRIS: So you were still at Deloitte at this point?

[15:32] GEOFF: Yes. A year or two later, I was so excited by sailing that little dinghy that I thought: I don't just want to do this — I want to sail it around the Isle of Wight. No severely disabled person had done that before. It was going to cost quite a bit of money, so as the marketing manager, I persuaded Deloitte to sponsor the trip. That was in 1992 — 60 miles around the Isle of Wight. I did it again in 1997 in just under eight hours, which is quite quick for a little dinghy. The reason that's important in my story is because I'd only ever set my sights at that level — round the Isle of Wight, and then I'd get on with my life again.

[16:14] GEOFF: I was dealing with dehydration, because you can't drink easily at that level and speed. I was worried about exposure — wind and salty water barraging me. And pressure sores, because I can't feel my backside, so sitting in one position for hours can put me in hospital. But when I finished eight hours later, I thought: I just sailed around the Isle of Wight. I could do it again today. And that started the idea — 60 miles, stop, sleep, 60 miles, stop, sleep — and you only have to keep doing that a few times before you've assembled the Round Britain Challenge.

[CHAPTER: Personal Everest — Sailing Around Great Britain — 17:43]

[17:43] GEOFF: It would be some ten years later that that plan kicked off in earnest. I had a crew of seven or eight people who'd volunteered their time, a 15-foot dinghy, a motorhome, and a five-year-old son who'd also never been in a motorhome. In my mind, I'd done the maths: 60 miles a day, back in four weeks.

[18:30] GEOFF: May the 14th, 2007, we set off from Southampton. And it didn't start too well — within three minutes I'd capsised. I was face down for over 30 seconds. My life jacket didn't inflate. What we hadn't allowed for was the lateral G-force when the boat was broaching — veering very hard and very fast left or right — and that threw me out. Luckily it happened on the start line with 300 people watching live on the BBC. Embarrassing and horrendous, but it could have been worse. That could have happened in the North Sea, and I wouldn't be here telling you about it. A friend of mine shouted: "There's the first chapter of your book." He was quite right.

[20:00] GEOFF: A week later we put everything right and on the 21st of May we pushed off. Seven people, three vehicles, two boats, two road trailers. We went to 51 harbours — leaving at four or five in the morning, getting in at six or seven at night. We ended up weather-bound in Wales, in Aberystwyth, for three weeks. And then I faced the biggest professional decision I had to make: do I change the plan and go through the Caledonian Canal — Oban to Inverness — instead of going around Cape Wrath? I so, so didn't want to do it. And then someone mentioned it was the route Ellen MacArthur took. So suddenly it was all right.

[CHAPTER: Cape Wrath to the Caledonian Canal — Decision Under Pressure — 22:23]

[22:23] GEOFF: That was a big life lesson — you don't realise at the time, but you learned a lot. The plan, after what happened on day one, was out the window because we were no longer on schedule. When I do public speaking for large corporates, this is something I major on: planning, and overcoming challenges that are beyond your control. The weather was beyond our control. Outcomes on sporting events are beyond your control. So things that go wrong may mean you have to look at your plan and adapt it.

[24:45] GEOFF: If I did it again, I'd go anti-clockwise. The prevailing southwesterly winds of this country are supposed to carry you up the west coast if you go clockwise — it didn't work like that. And the other reason: I did the best 50% first. The West Coast is stunningly beautiful, all the way up. I sailed up through the Crinan Canal, popped out at Crinan, the Inner Hebrides in front of me, sailed up to Oban — just stunningly beautiful — went through the Caledonian to Inverness and then down the East Coast of England, which is flat, shallow and, shall we say, not its most scenic.

[CHAPTER: 109 Days — Finishing the Round Britain — 27:07]

[27:07] GEOFF: My abiding memory is one of immense pride — for my wife, my son, my crew — when we crossed the finishing line. It took 109 days. Not four weeks, as I'd promised my wife. But I got to see our United Kingdom and go to places and meet people who were just lovely. People are what made the trip possible. The further north you went, the more welcoming people were. This was 2007, still pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram — really only just email and websites — and even despite those limitations we still managed to get quite a good following.

[CHAPTER: Sailing the Atlantic — Cane Garden Bay to Cane Garden Bay — 29:34]

[29:34] GEOFF: After doing the circumnavigation of Britain, the Atlantic was the next logical step. The challenge was I needed a bigger boat — I couldn't do it in that little 15-foot dinghy. And then, through serendipity, a good friend called Mike Brown, who used to own Snow and Rock, broke his back and became paraplegic. He sold Snow and Rock and bought himself some goodies — and one of those goodies was a beautiful 20-metre, 60-foot catamaran called Impossible Dream, which was fully wheelchair-accessible.

[30:20] GEOFF: A lot of people say: it's all very well in a sailing dinghy, but how do you manage on a big yacht? On Impossible Dream, almost everything was push-button — set the navigation, pull the sails in, let the sails out, generator, batteries, water-making, autopilot. Everything virtually push-button. The one thing I can't do, and couldn't do, was look after myself. When I went around Britain, no one ever really asked how I looked after myself, because my wife did it privately, as she still does. Crossing the Atlantic, she couldn't come — we had an 8-year-old son by then, and she gets very seasick. More importantly, it wasn't appropriate for me to drag my wife into my vanity projects. She was running a house, taking our son to school. If I was going to do these things, I had to do them properly.

[31:00] GEOFF: So I found a qualified nurse called Susanna, who lives in New Zealand, and a friend to film and document it. I took the boat effectively on my own between the Canary Islands and the Caribbean — every last bit of the sailing. That doesn't mean holding the wheel 24 hours a day; autopilots do that. It means setting the sails, getting back into the wheelchair when storms come through to start trimming, catnapping every 20 or 30 minutes, keeping an eye out for other vessels.

[32:27] GEOFF: It took four weeks — 3,000 miles, one stop. I had a sat-dome on board from the BBC and did three live broadcasts back to the BBC studio mid-Atlantic — one even on Christmas Day. And I chose my arrival destination as Cane Garden Bay in the British Virgin Islands, because that's where it all started. That's where I broke my neck in 1984. It wasn't to exorcise demons or, as the Americans say, for closure. It was a celebration. Twenty-five years ago I was on that beach and broke my neck. Now look at me: I'd just sailed a two-million-pound yacht on my own across the Atlantic, with two non-disabled people's lives dependent on me. That felt good.

[33:20] GEOFF: It was tough, don't get me wrong. Towards the end we got dirty fuel, which contaminated the diesel, which meant we couldn't run the generator — no fridges, no freezers, no autopilot. We ran out of food, which is very much a first-world problem when the food you're running out of is frozen fillet steak. But when we arrived, the BVI gave me honorary Belongership. Myself, Rockefeller, and one other person are, I believe, the only three who hold it — and that's more than Branson's got.

[CHAPTER: Recognition — MBE, Yachtsman of the Year & Olympic Torch — 37:14]

[37:14] CHRIS: Adventure really is a state of mind — you've shown us anything is possible. Can you talk us through your awards and recognition?

[38:00] GEOFF: The Yachtsman of the Year Award is probably the knighthood of yachting — voted on by the yachting journalists themselves. When you look at the names: Sir Ben Ainslie, Robin Knox-Johnston three or four times, Dame Ellen MacArthur, Sir Francis Chichester. These were my heroes growing up. I was nominated for it after sailing around Britain — I thought I was going to get it for that, because it was the hardest bloody thing I've ever done. I didn't get it that time. Then two years later I was up for it again for the Atlantic, and I got it. And I got it for something that I didn't feel was quite as tough.

[39:30] GEOFF: I was made an MBE for services to sailing — not services to disabled sailing. For me, that was a nice touch. I was being recognised as a yachtsman, not as someone for whom allowances were being made because of my disability. I carried the Olympic torch as well — that's a memory that will stay with me forever. It's on the shelf behind me somewhere. I was also made a Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire in 2011, which means I represent the Crown when the Lord Lieutenant can't attend his duties, accompany members of the Royal Family on visits to the county, and sit on the King's Award for Voluntary Service. And I'm a Freeman of the City of London.

[CHAPTER: Wet Wheels — Barrier-Free Boating for Everyone — 44:47]

[44:47] CHRIS: Can you talk to us about Wet Wheels?

[44:52] GEOFF: After all the accolades in 2010, the internet and social media were coming alive, and more and more people were contacting me asking how they could get on the water. I was seeing more and more disabled people who simply couldn't. If you park the question of whether it's best to sail or powerboat, and actually think: what are we trying to achieve? We're trying to get people on the water. That blue maritime environment has a language of its own — the wildlife, the industry that happens on the seas 24 hours a day. Quite often, within spitting distance of where most of us live, but many of us have never witnessed it, never been on it or in it. We talk a lot about mental health and recharging our batteries. Being on the water does all of those things and more.

[46:00] GEOFF: In terms of disabled people — and not all disabled people use wheelchairs — probably 90 to 95% of adaptive provision is sailing, which is fine. But the group not getting on the water are those who use big, heavy power wheelchairs and simply can't get on a sailboat. Impossible Dream now lives in America. There is no equivalent vessel here for hire. They don't exist. I think there are maybe one or two in Europe, but they're privately owned. So these people either cannot sail or don't want to sail — not everyone wants to put on all the gear and do left, right, north, right. They just want to get on the water and have some fun.

[CHAPTER: Building the Wet Wheels Fleet — 2011 to Today — 48:30]

[48:30] GEOFF: I did some research. In the end, to cut a long story short, I part-mortgaged my house. I did a deal with Suzuki Marine and Raymarine. We put our heads together and came up with what became Wet Wheels — fundamentally a nine-metre power catamaran, powered by twin Suzuki outboards, each 325 horsepower — 650 horsepower behind a three-tonne boat. Each boat is commercially coded to take passengers, which means the skippers have to be qualified. The design takes 10 people on board, of which three can be wheelchair users.

[49:25] GEOFF: In 2011, I came up with Wet Wheels number one — £200,000. Not a small amount of money, and I put my money where my mouth was. Year one, 400 people. Year two, 800 people. Then I realised I can't afford to run this thing — it costs £800 to fill it up, twice or three times a week, and you don't get a rebate on marine petrol. Year one, fuel cost me around £10,000. Year two, £15,000.

[50:00] GEOFF: Within two years, we had Wet Wheels Jersey. Then Wet Wheels Hamble in Southampton in 2016. In 2018 we put boats into Dover and Whitby in Yorkshire. In 2020, another Wet Wheels went into Falmouth in Cornwall. This year, Wet Wheels Edinburgh went live — Princess Anne launched it. And in the spring of next year, Wet Wheels Torbay. That's eight boats, including the Portsmouth original. We're taking over 12,000 people per year now, and in excess of 50,000 to 60,000 people in total.

[51:26] CHRIS: And whereabouts in Edinburgh is it?

[51:28] GEOFF: It's in Port Edgar, being run by the Port Edgar Watersports team. Princess Anne launched it for me in July, which was really kind of her. They're just knocking it out of the park — every day out with groups of disabled people who wouldn't otherwise get this opportunity. And what's really important is that it's a shared experience. You can do it with your mum and dad, your brothers and sisters — it's not just you. And the USP: every disabled person who comes on the boat has the opportunity to drive it. I've had them all designed with a ramp up to the steering wheel, so even people who can't move their arms can get underneath it and — for a moment — they're master and commander of a powerboat. My captain keeps control of the throttles, but that moment of being in charge matters.

[53:00] GEOFF: These things cost money. Each boat is £200,000, and it costs each operator £100,000 a year to run. It's never-ending fundraising.

[CHAPTER: What's Next — Finishing the Dream Around Britain — 55:00]

[55:00] CHRIS: What's the future for you, Geoff? Do you have more adventures planned, or are you slowing down?

[55:10] GEOFF: I have one last adventure planned. There's always one in the locker, isn't there? I'm going to take Wet Wheels around Great Britain. I mean, everything I've told you — it's got to be done. We're leaving next May. I keep telling myself it's going to take four weeks. It might be a bit longer than that. Going anti-clockwise this time. We've got a motorhome sorted. And what happens after that, I don't know. I do need to start stepping back from it all — it takes up a lot of my time and energy. I love it, but I just need to start stepping back a little.

[CHAPTER: Call to Adventure — Get Yourself Near Blue Space — 57:00]

[57:00] CHRIS: Two closing traditions. First — the Call to Adventure. What would you suggest for listeners?

[57:10] GEOFF: I would strongly encourage those who haven't experienced it before to somehow get on or near the water. Even if it just means going to sit on the beach and throw pebbles in the sea. If you're lucky enough to get on a boat — a local ferry across the river, anything — just look at the world differently. Be inspired and in awe of Mother Nature. And if that inspires you to do it again, and to a greater extent, brilliant. But get yourself near some blue space. The world just looks different from the water.

[CHAPTER: Pay It Forward — Wet Wheels — 58:00]

[58:00] CHRIS: And finally, Pay It Forward — a message to help us give something back.

[58:05] GEOFF: I've got more fun, enjoyment and fulfilment from the things I've done and not charged for — helping those less fortunate — than from almost anything else. And trust me, there are a lot of people with profoundly complex disabilities who, you know, I am very lucky to have the movement and independence I have. So I take great pleasure in trying to give a little back. Not necessarily asking anyone to support Wet Wheels directly — though we always need the money — but sometimes it's more than that. It's about going to the website and having a look and thinking: do you know what, I've got a friend or relative with a disabled child who might benefit from that. That's enough. You've done your bit. When you do something good that day — it doesn't have to be grand — you pull the quilt up that night and you just think: I did something good today. And the more we can all do that, I think the better the world will be.

[01:00:29] CHRIS: That's phenomenal. Thank you, Geoff. What a conversation. So as we wrap up — where can people find you and Wet Wheels?

[01:00:35] GEOFF: Two sites. One is geoffholt.com — G-E-O-F-F-H-O-L-T.com. That covers my sailing career, my speaking, my commercial work, a real deep dive into who I am. And then wetwheels.org — that brings up all the operators, shows you where they are, great photos and some great videos on YouTube. Just have a bit of a deep dive into it. Even I go back sometimes and think, blimey — we've done some amazing things over the last 10 years.