Uri: The Aluminum Motorsailer Built for a Paraplegic Sailor's Dream

Uri was built at Damstra shipyard in Holland in 1992, commissioned by a sixty-year-old sailor who'd become paraplegic and refused to give up the sport he'd built his life around. He spent two years planning the boat with his marine engineer friend, then another full year building her. By his own account, she was his "treasure" — "unique," "irreplaceable." He sailed her for eighteen years before putting her up for sale in 2011. She was architected by Itay Simhony of Raffles Yacht Shipyard: a true blue-water motorsailer with an aluminum hull for durability, sleeping 4-6 across a master king berth, a joinable twin-berth forward cabin, and two more twin berths on the upper deck. **Full accessibility, not a retrofit** Every part of Uri was designed around wheelchair access from the start. The engine room is reachable from all sides by wheelchair. Every sail is handled by motorized winches mounted inside the upper deck, rather than requiring someone to move around the deck to work them by hand. A hydraulic crane off the aft sundeck can lower a wheelchair user into the water to swim, and a hydraulic lift moves between the upper and lower decks. Light switches and other controls sit within reach of someone seated. The shower and head are both sized for a wheelchair. Eleven tons of lead ballast keep her heeling angle low and stable at sea. She's been cited as a reference case in academic papers on universal design in the nautical field. **Specifications** - LOA 16.43m | LWL 13.93m | Beam 5.60m | Draft 2.20-2.40m | Displacement 38 metric tonnes - Hull: Aluminum | Engine: Perkins M165T, 150hp | Sail area: 128.5 m² - Generator: Kohler 16kW | Battery bank: 800 Amp-hours at 24v | Watermaker: 38 L/hr - Fuel capacity: sources differ (2,000L per the boat's own spec page, 3,200L per a 2011 press account) | Freshwater: 1,600L - Electronics: Simrad autopilot, Icom VHF, Raymarine E-Series radar/chartplotter with a Scitex backup (incl. engine room CCTV), B&G wind/depth, ICOM Class B AIS transponder - All hydraulics (aft winch, anchor winch, 3 sail winches, furling system, aft crane, bow thruster) run on redundant power systems - Anchoring: CQR primary anchor with 105m chain, Fortress spare **Current status** As of the 2011 press coverage, the original owner (unnamed in available sources) was selling after 18 years aboard, with the boat based in the Mediterranean. A dedicated site, wheelchairsailing.com, still promotes the boat today in Italian, Spanish, and English, with recent-looking photos from Croatia, Turkey, and Greece — suggesting she's continued cruising the Mediterranean under one or more subsequent owners, though we don't have a confirmed current owner or exact ownership chain since 2011. *Photos available directly from wheelchairsailing.com (their own promotional images, lower-risk to reference):* - [Uri moored in Croatia](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/homepage/croatia_large.jpg) - [Uri in a Turkish bay](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/800/Turkey_1.jpg) - [Upper deck facing aft (galley & winches)](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/800/Looking_Aft.jpg) - [Upper deck facing forward](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/800/Looking_Fore.jpg) - [Wheelchair-accessible engine room](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/800/Engine_Room.jpg) - [Floor plan](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/800/URI_-_GA_Model_1.png) - [Sail plan](https://www.wheelchairsailing.com/static/img/uri/800/URI_-_SAILPLAN_Model_Trimmed.png) *Note: the boat's own Pictures page (wheelchairsailing.com/pictures/) has many more captioned photos — lower deck cabins, cockpit, dining, dinghy, sailing underway — that didn't resolve to direct file URLs when fetched (likely a JS-loaded gallery). Worth browsing directly if you want the full set.* *Sources: wheelchairsailing.com (current owner/operator site), and "To make dreams come true - a totally wheelchair-accessible yacht" by Nancy Knudsen, Sail-World, August 23, 2011 (sail-world.com/Australia — note their own photos are explicitly copyrighted; not reproduced here).*