A charity founded by the first disabled man to sail across the Atlantic is giving people with complex disability the chance to experience the open water.

Last year, 6000 disabled people, many of them living with severe neurological conditions and complex disability, were given a rare opportunity to experience the freedom of the open sea. The voyages were organised by Wetwheels Foundation, a charity founded in 2011 by disabled yachtsman Geoff Holt MBE. Holt was the first disabled person to sail around the British Isles and the first to sail across the Atlantic. He was already helping disabled people access the joys of the ocean as chairman of the Royal Yachting Association’s Sailability, a project that has allowed 20,000 disabled people to experience sailing. But there was a gap for people with more complex and severe conditions.