A plucky teenager with cerebral palsy sails into St Katharine Docks next to the Tower of London this-afternoon on the final stage of her campaign to raise funds for other disabled youngsters to take up yachting.
Natasha Lambert doesn’t let her disability stop her sailing her yacht on the high seas.
She arrives at St Katharine’s at 2pm from her home port of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, after a nine-day voyage along the south coast past Dover, up the Thames and docking at 12.30pm.
Natasha’s Artemis 20 yacht Miss Isle is equipped with new sip-and-puff technology designed by her father. It lets her to manoeuvre the vessel using a straw that turns the rudder right when sipped and left when puffed.
Natasha aims to raise funds through Capital Venture for a new charity being set-up to teach disabled people to sail using sip-and-puff technology.
She swaps her boat for her specialised heart-walker after tying up at the quayside to walk into the City to collect checks from the big banks in the Square Mile for her proposed charity, the Miss Isle School of Sip-Puff sailing. Her fundraidsing voyage ends with a reception at St Katharine’s tomorrow.
“Natasha is a truly inspiring youngster,” St Katharine’s marina director William Bowman said. “She is raising awareness and money to create a new charity to help others with disabilities to learn to sail.”
Her capital venture is the latest in what is becoming a long list of achievements for Natasha. She undertook the ‘Sea and Summit’ challenge in 2014, sailing 500 miles from Cowes to South Wales and climbing the Brecon Beacons.
Tickets for tomorrow night’s fundraiser at the River Lounge in St Katharine Docks, with the chance to meet Natasha and her team and see her boat, are available by email to webphb@btinternet.com, at £50, all proceeds going to the charity.
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