Inspirational disabled sailor Hilary Lister made headlines when she became the first quadriplegic to sail single-handedly across the English Channel.
Now she wants to push the boundaries even further: she is planning a solo voyage around the whole of the British Isles.
Wheelchair-bound Hilary has a progressive neurological disorder and can only move her head. "I am in constant pain and I need large doses of morphine just to get out of bed in the morning," she revealed in a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph.
Sporty and active until the age of 15, she did not start sailing until 2003- after she lost the use of her legs.
"Sailing saved my life," she said. The discovery that here was an activity that allowed her to regain her independence banished the depression she had been feeling about her health, and she started to look ahead to new challenges.
She crossed the Channel in her small boat Malin on Aug 23 last year in six hours 13 minutes using specially adapted 'sip and puff' equipment attached to her mouth.
"I plan to do a Ellen-style hop around the entire country," said Hilary, referring to role-model Ellen MacArthur's first solo adventure around UK seas when she was a teenager. "I am going to hop from port to port, in a small boat similar to Malin, 20 ft to 30 ft with some weather protection.
"I'm looking at doing the UK trip next summer. It really will be a marathon as I reckon we will only do about 50 miles a day and it will take up to four months. The challenge is much more about endurance for me and will prove more about my ability as a sailor as I will have to master how to plot courses."
The voyage will start and finish in Cowes and Hilary will travel anti-clockwise around Britain to make best use of the prevailing winds.
"My challenge is to make people re-think views about disability,” she explained. “When you are disabled, there is currently nothing available for you between a dinghy and a flashy boat costing half a million. No one has done what I am setting out to do. It is a whole new ball game. My plan this year is to visit as many sailing clubs as possible, primarily in order to learn to sail in their local waters, but also to raise the profile of disabled sailing."
Eventually she has a dream of racing single-handed. "In order to make transatlantic crossings, or take part in the Fastnet race, in short to have a boat that will go anywhere and do anything, we will need to build a catamaran from scratch. Currently, no boat exists that can be actively sailed by a quadriplegic," she said.
She needs about £500,000 to launch the catamaran and has been talking to sponsor Andrew Pindar. "I think, it is an extremely exciting project that will probably occupy me for the rest of my life," she said.
"It is a continuation of my dream to get more disabled people sailing, rather than to take more disabled people sailing. I want to make the experience I was lucky enough to have last year open to everybody."
For more information visit www.hilarylister.co.uk
