Episode Details

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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 Lie