It was during a previous interview with Miles Hilton-Barber [1] that I discovered that his older brother, Geoff, had been an inspiration to him. He informed me that Geoff was also blind from retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and had built his own boat in his back garden.
If that was not amazing enough, he had also become the first blind person to sail solo across an ocean from Durban, South Africa to Freemantle, Australia. Naturally, I was intrigued by this astonishing story and contacted Geoff to see if I could find out more about his exploits. I was delighted to be able to speak with him virtually in early spring this year.
Top and above: Death Valley, California, USA, 2005.
Geoff grew up alongside his younger brother Miles in Africa, in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Zimbabwe). He explained that not only was his father, Maurice, a distinguished fighter pilot serving during World War II in the Royal Air Force, but so were his two uncles, Roger and Harry. All three were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. “The family all had brilliant eyesight and I think my brother and I struggled quite a bit, realising that we didn’t see so well. Probably our folks also didn’t realise we didn’t see so well. It was difficult to come to terms with.”
Initially, Geoff didn’t know that he couldn’t see as well as other people. When playing cops and robbers outside at night he bumped into people that he couldn’t see but didn’t know that they had seen him. “I was also pretty useless at cricket and rugby because I couldn’t see the ball so well. I ended up being a reasonable runner because the eyesight was not an issue.” At school, he sat at the front of the class and read other people’s notes but didn’t think too much about it. Towards the end of high school, he was given glasses but the diagnosis at that stage was just short-sightedness.
It wasn’t until Geoff was 21 years old and living in Johannesburg that he went to see an eye specialist and was diagnosed with RP. “He was very hesitant about telling me about the possibility of RP. He showed me a book and the typical changes in the retina and told me very gently that I had RP. He explained that it might not deteriorate quickly and it might not get any worse.” Following the initial diagnosis, he did not have any further follow-up with ophthalmology.
Geoff studied for a degree in maths and physics but found things very challenging with his poor vision. When doing calculus, he made more clerical mistakes than formula mistakes. After university, he did various jobs including running a dog kennel business. This worked very well for a couple of years and was quite successful, looking after 200 dogs and 60 cats in peak season. However, he eventually realised it wasn’t fair to the animals that he was looking after. “I couldn’t look at an animal and see that it hadn’t been eating and had to rely on kennel staff who might not have been as dedicated.”
Following this experience, and with a lack of direction, he had a long chat with Dr Walter Cohen, who was a prominent figure in blind welfare. He asked him, ‘What do intelligent, partially sighted people do for a career when they are losing their sight?’ As a result of their conversation, he applied for a manager’s job running a blind workshop in Bophuthatswana. He had a lot of experience from his previous working career in finance, production and the building trade that helped with the workshop. “There were about 300 blind people and I think we were one of the biggest workshops in the world. We had a contract making mattresses for the Department of Prisons. We made a lot of baskets, cane furniture and brush ware.”
After six years in this workshop, when Bophuthatswana became independent in 1977, Geoff transferred to manage the workshop for the blind in Durban for 20 years. Whilst he was there, he started a plastics factory. “One of the problems with workshops for disabled people is that it’s very difficult just from manual labour to make enough profit to pay a good wage and cover overheads. Through connections with people that sold cane, we started a plastics factory making floral ribbon for bouquets of flowers. We were the only people in South Africa making this. We then started making twine and became the second biggest manufacturer of ordinary twine in South Africa.” The profit that the plastics factory generated enabled Geoff to start a daycare centre for blind children.
His adventures began in his early twenties when he became interested in sky diving. When he and his brother were young, they read all the books that his dad had about the war. They were particularly captivated by the story of the rear gunner in a Lancaster, who had to bail out with a parachute at 20,000 feet because the plane was on fire. They read the books avidly, but Geoff never thought that he would have the courage to jump out of an aeroplane. However, when he was at a job in a financial organisation, one of his colleagues came back having done his first jump. “He said that it was amazing and I must go. I never intended to, but I ended up being dared by a couple of pretty girls in the office into parachuting. I couldn’t say I was too scared so I went. I never stopped from then on. Once I started, I realised that jumping was a great sport and was an alternative to flying.”
Geoff (left) running Hillcrest Marathon, South Africa, 1982.
Geoff ended up becoming an instructor at the skydiving club. At one stage, he had the South African record for the highest jump at night, which was from 20,000 feet which he completed with two friends. Up until that time the record had been 16,000 feet. “There was a full moon and the air was very thin and cold at altitude. It was -20. As I fell, I could feel the air getting warmer. As it got thicker, I remember I felt as if I was slowing down, like when you’re going in a fast lift and it starts slowing down. It was just the most amazing experience.” He was in free fall for 78 seconds before opening his parachute.
He jumped for about five years until one jump which nearly came to grief. He realised that there was a potential accident waiting to happen, after which he decided to give up parachuting. He was keen to continue with a sport involving wind and weather and therefore decided to take up sailing when he was 27 years old by joining one of his friends at a sailing club. He started off by sailing a dinghy. It was cold during the winter and he discovered he could buy a hull and deck boat in kit form. Despite being blind, he built a 24-foot hull and deck boat. “I then decided that I wanted to sail a bigger boat and sold it for a 28-footer boat kit which took me a few years to finish off.”
It was around this time that Geoff heard about a partially sighted sailor in America who had tried to sail from New York to England. He was unsuccessful in his attempt and had to be picked up after two weeks, but this planted the seed in Geoff thinking about sailing by himself. “Five years after the first attempt, I then heard on the radio about a second attempt, also from New York to England. He made about a week but I remember being angry when I heard about it because I thought, ‘Why have I left it so long? Why couldn’t the first blind person to sail across an ocean be a South African?’ So, it wasn’t a hare-brained idea that came to me out of the blue.”
Geoff then built a 33-foot hull and deck yacht which took him five years. It was fully adapted to single-handed sailing, with a stiffer keel and a lot of talking instruments. By this stage, he had been sailing for 20 years and decided that he wanted to sail solo from South Africa to Australia. “My wife and family thought that it was crazy and dangerous, which it was. The deal with my wife was that I must do an ocean crossing first to get some experience before trying it on my own.” He therefore did a trial sail with a crew from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town. “I learned an awful lot about things that didn’t work so I think that really helped.”
Kilimanjaro Summit, Tanzania.
Marathon de Sables, Morocco.
His boat was self-steering but he had to change the sails and cook for himself. All the information that a sighted person gets from typical navigation information he had in audio. He had an ordinary digital navigation system but it had a speech repeater. He could push one button to get his latitude and another button for his longitude. Geoff had a few distinct advantages over the others that had failed in their attempts sailing from New York to London. Firstly, he had built his own boat with a view to handling it on his own. Secondly, he had skippered crews on races up and down the coast. Lastly, he had a lot of bad weather experience.
Geoff did indeed manage to sail his yacht solo from Durban to Freemantle in 52 days, which was quite eventful in parts – at one stage, being hit by a force-eight storm. During the voyage, he was becalmed [2] for a week in the Indian Ocean because of a high-pressure system moving south. He therefore decided to sail down into the Roaring 40s. “The traditional latitude if you’re sailing from Africa to Australia is 36–38 degrees south which keeps you on the bottom edge of the Indian Ocean high-pressure system,” he explained. “If you go down into the 40s you end up in the Southern Ocean which has one big weather system that moves East all the time. You pick up low-pressure weather systems from the Antarctic which can develop into really big cyclones. When I was becalmed and stuck for a week, I got impatient. I said to myself, ‘Let’s go down into the 40s and see what happens.’ Boy, it happened very quicky!”
It was whilst Geoff was in the Southern Ocean that he was hit by a force-eight storm with the wind speed peaking at 64 knots. “It was horrendous with screaming winds and breaking waves. I just hoved to [3] for two days and thought I was going to roll. It was really scary.” Geoff also had problems with power on the boat which was needed for his lights and navigation system. During the first storm, water got down below which shorted his alternator. However, he was still able to rely on his wind generator to charge his batteries. During the second storm, the wind was so strong it sheared the mounting pole that the generator was on and it fell overboard. He still had a thousand miles to go to sail back up into the Indian Ocean and then onto Australia. “It was touch and go. Eventually I had to email and declare that I would probably run out of electricity. I had a team in Perth and they found a boat heading for Durban that agreed to come past me and give me a charged battery to allow me to finish the trip.”
In retrospect, Geoff believes that it was a mistake heading down into the Roaring 40s. The most south-westerly part of Australia is Cape Leeuwin (at around 115 degrees east and 40 degrees south) beyond which further south is the Great Bight, a large oceanic bay off the South coast of Australia. If you sail too far south then there is potential to be blown past Cape Leeuwin and into the Great Bight with the potential to crash into the cliffs along the coastline. Geoff’s biggest fear was not being able to get up far enough north again.
“I was down to about 43 to 44 degrees south and I had to sail up north before I got anywhere near 115 degrees east,” Geoff narrated. “If I had been blown into the Great Bight and with batteries failing, I would just have been dead meat. One night I was sitting feeling very depressed and shivery and thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to get out of this.’ It was amazing as suddenly there was a warm wind that blew and with a change in direction. It was actually coming from the southwest which was a perfect wind for me. I was able to run directly northeast and put up a lot of sail and scooted out of the Roaring 40s just in time. Then I was able to get more stable winds to the west coast of Australia. So, at the 11th hour I got the right wind that got me out of there. Then 200 miles from Perth I met with a boat and got a new battery and a sighted crew member. This was a great relief so I didn’t have to complete the whole voyage on my own.”
At one stage during the trip, Geoff was nearly washed overboard. This happened during the first storm down in the 40s. He had decided that when the wind dropped to 25 knots he would go and pull out the staysail [4] to start making some headway. There were some big swells where there was little wind at the bottom of the trough but at the top the waves and the wind really picked up. “I couldn’t see the depths of the swells. It all seemed calm. I thought all I have to do is nip out of the cockpit, let out the sheet and pull the sail. It’s a quick and easy movement. As soon as the sail caught, the boat came up on the wave and it broached [5], laying it virtually flat. I got knocked down sideways. Basically, my hips went over the lifelines [6] with my back in the water. But I managed to grab the main sheet and when the boat came up again, I came up with it. I was arrogant and cocky and very nearly paid the price.” After that, Geoff clipped into the lifelines all the time. He still has nightmares about this episode. “It was something that really scared me afterwards and it happened so quickly. The thought of falling off a boat on your own in the middle of nowhere, the uselessness of how long you are going be able to swim for and knowing you’re going to die.”
There was one occasion where he also nearly set himself on fire. He cooked using a gas stove on a gimbal [7]. When he lit the stove, he would turn the gas knob and hold it in. Then with his other hand he would flick the lighter on and bring it to the stove and light the gas. “But I would always click the lighter next to my ear because sometimes you flick a lighter and can’t hear it go on. If I flicked the lighter next to my ear, I could hear it and feel the warmth. About a month into the trip, I had forgotten that I had grown a beard. I set my beard on fire switching on the lighter. I dropped the lighter and smacked my beard with my hand. It was humorous afterwards but gave me a hell of a fright.”
Geoff’s biggest fears for the trip were a fire or an accident onboard. “If I had slipped and sprained my ankle or if there had been a fire that would have been a big problem. I was lucky that I was able to move around the boat on deck in bad weather and shorten the sails with my lifelines in place.” In terms of back up, he also had a life raft. However, he knew that he wouldn’t use it as the practicalities of getting into it with a bag of food and water if his boat had been sinking in the 40s would have been impossible. “If I had fallen overboard that would have been it. If I had hit something that would have been it. I think single-handed sailors just accept that you could be run down by a ship in the middle of the night or hit a floating container. I decided that people can’t be watching outside all the time and they have to sleep. So, I ran not much more of a risk than sighted people.”
One of Geoff’s concerns for the trip was how he would manage the loneliness. “I found during the trip that I loved the solitude. I preferred my own company so that when I actually landed in Australia, I was stressed with all the noise and the people around me. In the Southern Ocean though, most of the time it was absolutely amazing, with big waves and huge mountains of water but far apart. One night, listening in the cockpit, I heard an incredible roar where one wave crossed another and it broke and sounded like a town hall collapsing. There was magic in being out there and getting to experience something very few other people had. There are also beautiful memories of being becalmed. Huge numbers of dolphins were coming around and squeaking. I drifted through a huge flock of birds set along the ocean. It could have been a hundred acres. As I passed through them, I felt the heat from all their body warmth – an incredible memory.”
After the voyage, Geoff took off the keel and the mast and transported the boat back to South Africa in a container. The trip cost him a lot of money and took him years to pay off his credit card. He carried on sailing for a year after the voyage but there was no longer a target to aim for so he eventually sold the boat to a friend. “After that, sailing was a closed chapter and I was happy to move on.” The trip did give Geoff an enormous sense of achievement. “Afterwards, it gave me so much confidence knowing that I had done it. It was a way of being equal. It’s quite easy for people with disabilities to get depressed and think that they’re of less worth than other people.”
Geoff got a lot of publicity in South Africa following his successful ocean crossing. It helped him raise money for organisations that he had worked for. Geoff’s solo voyage was also an inspiration to his brother Miles who went on to become a blind adventurer as well with a focus on aviation. They teamed up to climb Kilimanjaro together and also run the Marathon de Sables. They also both entered the ‘Death Valley Run’, often described as the toughest foot race on Earth, which is a 135-mile ultramarathon through Death Valley in California. His brother had to pull out because he got very chafed. However, Geoff became the first South African to run and complete the race. He was awarded the belt buckle, given to those completing the race in under 48 hours. Geoff finished in 46 and a half hours. “It was an incredible experience of learning about stamina and looking after your body.”
Geoff is retired now but reflected on the past. “I’ve done so many things because I think my brother and I had an adventurous nature. We got a lot of kick out of doing adventurous things and that’s helped us cope as people going blind.” He still sails occasionally, the last time being in the Sea of Cortez off the coast of Mexico with two old friends a couple of years ago. He lives by the sea now and spends his retirement raising money for charities. The main charity he fundraises for now is one for abused women and children. “It’s a big problem in South Africa. I’ve recently raised over a million rand for them in the last month. It’s a third of their annual budget. I’m very proud to be able to help them and in a way keep them going.”
I asked Geoff if he had any advice for life. “If you want to be a winner, mix with winners and if you want to be a loser, mix with losers,” he replied. “I think a lot of people can end up being like sheep because no sheep is adventurous. Because I met people through parachuting and sailing, I ended up with people who found these activities normal and I managed to cope.”
As we rounded off our discussion, Geoff described another moment from his solo sailing adventure. “I was sitting quietly by the mast about a thousand miles from Cape Town in the early part of the voyage. I was playing Frank Sinatra’s My Way and the hull was acting as a speaker. A whale came up and blew not even 20 metres away. I could smell his breath. I got such a fright. I really believe that he had heard the noise from far away of Frank Sinatra singing My Way. I couldn’t think of a better tune to play that might attract a whale. So, those are the things that I dream about.” As we said our goodbyes, I reflected that in many respects this song represented the manner in which Geoff has conducted his life. By overcoming the limitations of his disability to build his own boat and sail it across an ocean solo, he really has lived his life his way.
References
1. Cackett P. Danger Zone: Miles Hilton Barber. Eye News 2025;32(1):6–9.
2. ‘Becalmed’ – a boat unable to move because of lack of wind.
3. ‘Hove to’ – to adjust the sails and helm of a boat to allow it to stop in open water allowing it to control its direction. Often done to wait out bad weather.
4. ‘Staysail’ – a sail attached to a stay which is a wire running from the mast to another part of the boat. Typically, smaller than the main sail and used in stronger winds when the main sail may be too much.
5. ‘Broach’ – this occurs when a boat, typically downwind, unexpectedly and uncontrollably turns into the wind, losing control.
6. ‘Lifelines’ – these are safety systems designed to prevent sailors falling or being washed overboard in rough conditions.
7. ‘Gimbal’ – a device on the boat for keeping an object such as a compass or stove horizontal.
