Getting Tough | Geoff Holt’s Personal Atlantic

Everything is getting much more challenging now. Yesterday the motion was so bad, I could barely keep myself upright in my wheelchair, let alone type a blog, even now, every tap of the keypad is a chore. The honeymoon period of calm seas after leaving Lanzarote is now a distant memory. It's not that we are enduring any horendous weather, in fact the wind barely reaches 20 knots and, right now it is only blowing less than 10 knots. The real debilitating factor is the sea state. Again, it is nothing too bad, at worst waves are only 2 metres and the Atlantic swells barely 3 metres. The problem is that it is a very confused sea; waves and swells coming from all directions and the wind is blowing directly on the starboard beam, not good for a lightweight catamaran.  Impossibe Dream is bobbing like a cork, pitching and yawing, snatching and jerking, her 60ft length belying her skinny 17 tonnes as she gets picked up and slapped broadside by the seas.  I found yesterday and last night very tough indeed. It is difficult enough existing in a wheelchair in a house that does not move but negotiating my chair around ID is like riding a unicycle on a rollercoaster.  One of the factors of quadriplegia is having no tricep muscles in my arms. Those who know me may think I have full movement of my arms, I don't, it's a false impression, I only have 30% use of my biceps and that is it, no triceps at all, nor wrist, hand or finger movement, what you see is like a kind of "trick movement".  Controlling my arms so I may use my finger to type or to use my knuckles to push a button on the radar is made all the more difficult by the constant motion of ID, it's as though my arm has no spacial control.  For every correct keystroke you read, I have deleted more than double because of mistakes and my knuckles are red raw from continually pushing wrong buttons on the instrument panels.

via www.geoffholt.com

I thought this summed up how tough Geoff Holt's personal challenge is. When you watch his video logs it's easy to be deceived by his positive tone. Make no mistake this is is an incredibly tough feat.