Pioneering achievement: Jazz Turner is the first wheelchair user to circumnavigate Great Britain single-handedly

Yesterday, 30 June, at 13:45, Jazz Turner reached her destination in Brighton harbour after 28 days at sea. The 26-year-old engineer from Seaford in East Sussex was the first wheelchair user to sail around Great Britain and Ireland alone, unassisted and non-stop. With her 27-foot Albin Vega named "Fear", Turner travelled around 2,400 nautical miles and collected donations for the project along the way "Sailability", with which the clubs of the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) enable people with disabilities to sail.

One trip, many obstacles

"This journey is designed to show that with a little imagination and a lot of hard work, there are no limits to what can be achieved," said Turner at the start of her Project. However, their successfully completed journey would probably have pushed even sailors without disabilities to their limits.

In September 2024, Turner buys Albin Vega 27 and calls it "Fear". The name will denote the two ends of what the project does with its constitution, because the four letters of "Fear" stand for "Face everything and rise". Face everything and rise; Turner will often have said this to himself.

A trip around the United Kingdom and Ireland is expected to bring strong winds and storms, choppy tidal seas and those with wave crests, and rain to boot. But these navigational challenges are not her greatest. Turner lives with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes joint instability, fainting spells and cramps, accompanied by severe pain. Her life expectancy is very limited. On land, she is dependent on a wheelchair and can only consume limited amounts of food and fluids. "Sailing is the easy part," explains Turner. "The challenge is managing my health, nutrition and wellbeing."

Even before the voyage, she had some doubts about its feasibility. "Just getting to this point was a marathon," she wrote on her Instagram profile at the end of May, a few days before she was due to cast off for just under a month.

Journey into the unknown

She takes the plunge, but has to drop anchor in Falmouth on the third day to work on herself and the boat. The journey only continues on the seventh day. She battles her way around southern England and up the west coast of Ireland, often accompanied by heavy weather. With bright eyes under the thick brim of her woolly hat and a beaming smile, she sits at the tiller as sunshine lifts and warms her spirits.

Most of the time, however, things get tough. Then it ruthlessly reveals how unglamorous sailing is when the body is covered in bruises and the skin cracks in a salty environment, when you can't get out of several layers of tight clothing for days on end and fatigue becomes omnipresent. When it's all about functioning and moving forward. Only when she reaches the deserted island of Saint Kilda in the Outer Scottish Hebrides, which marks the halfway point of her journey, does she truly believe that her goal is achievable.

But Andy, her autopilot, fails on upwind courses. In order to make progress, she has to use the tiller. For hours, in the rain and chilly wind. Everything gets clammy. Plagued by severe pain, she has to force herself to eat and drink something. "I'm tired, wet, cold. Hungry and in pain," she writes on the 21st day of her journey, her destination almost within reach. "I always want to show myself as the tough, strong, courageous person. Sometimes I think that's what people want to see in me. But that would be a lie," she admits. "Right now I feel defeated, destroyed and can't stop crying. But that's okay. Because no matter what and no matter how, I keep going." Mile after mile, wave after wave and breath after breath is the mantra she recites and writes that keeps her going.

Just one day before her planned arrival, exhaustion after days on the cross and at the tiller puts her into an unintentional deep sleep, from which she cannot wake up even with the alarm clock and finally the beeping echo sounder, until the "Fear" sits aground off Folkestone. British sea rescuers and the coastguard come to the rescue, but Turner doesn't want to give up so close to the finish line. "Unassisted" is part of her challenge. The rescuers remain on standby nearby. Fear falls dry and lies on its side without sustaining any serious damage. At low tide, Turner crawls over green, slippery rocks with the anchor on his shoulder to secure the boat and free "Fear" at high tide. A day later, the cheers of her friends, followers and sponsors await her as she moors in Brighton.

Donations and other goals

30,000 pounds for the project "Sailability" was the goal of the fundraising campaign that Turner launched on the occasion of her trip. This target was clearly exceeded: A good £50,000 had been raised by the time she returned. "Every time I wanted to give up, I just had to look at the donation total to remind myself why I was doing it," she explains. Sailability" wants to use the money to buy adapted Hansa dinghies for disabled sailors.

Despite her health restrictions, Turner had already achieved success in sailing before her latest voyage, coming first in the RS Venture Connect at the 2024 Para Nordic Champs and the Swiss Cup, among others, and representing the United Kingdom on the Para World Sailing Committee. Her record-breaking race, which has now been successfully completed, was intended to signal the return of sailing to the Paralympic stage. Above all, however, it should now show people with disabilities that, despite all the obstacles, much more is possible in sailing than perhaps initially thought. What's more: "This project, Project Fear, has kept me going far beyond my diagnosis," says Turner, describing the positive impact of her project. However, she never planned what would come next, "because I didn't really expect to get this far."