British sailor Jazz Turner left a tiny Cornish harbour with a heavily reefed sail and a token triangle of canvas up, hiking out into cold spray with hands she could no longer feel. She was grinning the whole time.
"I think for me then it was the sheer exhilaration," Turner recalls. "But it was also more to do with finally being in charge of something, of being totally independent. It's always been at its core about freedom. When I'm out there, no one can tell me what to do or where to go."
That need for autonomy has shaped everything since. It carried her through sailing as her disability progressed, and it carried her through the hardest chapter of her life.
In December 2023, Turner was given a terminal diagnosis and told she had an estimated six months left.
As that deadline closed in, she faced an impossible question: how do you live when you don't know how long you have?
"For me, I still don't have the answer," she says. "But it led to another question: what did I want to achieve if I could only do one thing? The answer was simple: to sail around the world."
A full circumnavigation wasn't affordable at the time, so she scaled her ambition back to sailing around the UK and Ireland instead. Project FEAR was born.
The voyage demanded everything of her, physically and mentally, but Turner says its real value lay elsewhere. "Completing it was more about realising I was capable of even more than I let myself believe," she reflects. "It showed to me, and the world, really, that with a bit of imagination and a lot of hard work, anything is possible."
She has no plans to slow down.
"I will never stop pushing and dreaming," Turner says. "What drives me is a constant desire to prove to the world that you don't have to be defined by your disability or other people's expectations. Growing up, I struggled to find a role model. I hope I can be what I needed when I was a kid."
Her next challenge takes her to Portugal for the 2026 World Sailing Inclusion Championships, where she'll compete in the emerging discipline of seated wingfoiling. She has met only one other person who sails the discipline, so the chance to train and race alongside a wider international fleet matters to her.
"I'm looking forward to really picking their brains and learning from the other competitors to improve myself," she says.
Turner is also a strong supporter of World Sailing's push to grow adaptive disciplines, and she frames accessibility as central to the sport rather than an add-on.
"At its very basic, sailing is for everyone," she says. "Everyone should be allowed access to the water regardless of gender, background, or disability. The strategy ensures everyone gets access, showcasing our sport as the only one where people with varying disabilities and conditions can all compete on the same race course."
She still holds on to one bigger goal, shared widely among adaptive sailors: seeing sailing return to the Paralympic Games.
"Competing at a Paralympics will never not be the dream. It is the pinnacle showcase, and I would love to be on that stage fighting for a medal for my country," Turner says.
"Sailing itself being reincluded would be a massive win for everyone across the sport, from the beginner who sees it on TV for the first time, to the grassroots programmes that struggle with funding. It would reward the athletes at the top who fight so hard to compete by giving them the platform they truly deserve."
