So you’re paralysed, you’ve got no friends and you have half a million pounds of compensation cash from your recent injury burning a pressure sore into your disabled arse.

Is your life over? Is it heck as like, the question is how did you end up in the wheelchair on the first instance?

If you were a speed freak before, I expect you will be a speed freak still, so why not channel your energy into something where you will get a hell of a thrill.

Yes my crippled friends you need to get your wheelchair into gear and buy yourself a RIB, otherwise known as a ‘Rigid Inflatable Boat‘ or ‘Rigid Boat‘ or if you are very lazy a ‘Speedboat‘.

For the uninitiated, a RIB puts you as close to the sea as you can possible go without actually being dunked in. They have a huge engine on the back of the craft and when the accelerator kicks-in you are off!

I wouldn’t say a RIB is safe for high level Quadriplegic, Christopher Reeve would have managed before paralysis, but I doubt the ventilator would have coped to well with the salt water, but I would say that anyone beneath C6 or C7 level would get on well with a RIB.

I think I found a recent image of Stephen Hawkins following a ride on a RIB. The image clearly indicates his face has been pulled back further with the force generated by the thrust of the boat over and above the damage caused by Stephen Hawking’s Motor Neurone disease. So if the great Professor Hawkins can don a life-jacket and venture on to the high seas, why not you?

You can easily fit a lightweight wheelchair onto a 7 metre RIB. I could easily see a low-level paraplegic being able to take a RIB out themselves.

Having experienced a RIB for myself I would recommend a Rigid Inflatable Boat to anyone, they are great fun. Getting back to the original question, ‘Can Cripples use Rigid Inflatable Boats? The answer is YES, YES, YES! So to the tartan blanket brigade of wheelchair users who bleat like lambs, get of your fat disabled arses and get yourself into the world of RIB’s.