Winning a finals slot in New Zealand’s Attitude Awards is floating Hastings sailor Otis Horne’s boat.

Born with spina bifida, the 19-year-old is one of three finalists in the Courage in Sport category of the awards, which celebrate the excellence and achievements of Kiwis with a disability.

The winners of eight categories and the supreme award winner are to be announced at a gala dinner in Auckland on December 3, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Otis began using a wheelchair when he was just three years old but he knew from a young age that sport was going to feature in his life.

One of this year’s milestones was completing EIT’s Certificate in Health and Fitness.

Another was to sail Cook Strait as one of four Hawke’s Bay sailors who undertook the notoriously difficult passage.

The group included the first sailors with disabilities to complete the solo crossing and the story of their achievement was aired recently on TV3’s Story.

The four sailed Cook Strait in Hansa Liberty yachts, a small craft of just 3.6 metres.  The group also included Dennis Hebberley from Greenmeadows, who is blind, and Samuel Gibson from Havelock North, who has brittle bones disease and Katy Kenah, who established Sailability Hawke’s Bay with husband Mark Kenah in 2009.

Soon after, Otis took part in a Sailability Have a Go Day but the then 12-year-old wasn’t immediately taken with the sport.  He returned six months later, however, and his love of sailing has continued to intensify since.

“Sport has increased my confidence and my physical ability,” Otis says.  “I love the social aspects as well as the fitness and I have met some amazing people.”

Katy says the Cook Strait venture involved a great deal of planning, to ensure the passage was as safe as possible. That included careful calculations around tides and studying weather forecasts three times a day for the week the group were based in Picton.  Setting off from the mouth of Queen Charlotte Sound, the yachties were accompanied by two rescue boats and a launch.

“It never crossed our minds that we were going to die,” she says, “and despite what others said we didn’t think for a moment that we were being naïve or stupid.”

The trip was made possible with a donation from Google in Australia, who contacted Sailability Hawke’s Bay and asked how they could help.

Although four-metre swells and winds gusts of more than 20 knots cancelled ferry sailings, all the sailors made it safely to Porirua harbour after 11 hours of sailing.

Otis relished the experience and only days later he was asking Katy, a work and life skills lecturer at EIT, what was being planned next.  As it is, he sails every weekend, summer and winter – unless he’s heading to Turoa to ski.

He is also giving back, staying behind to help after training sessions at Sailability and assisting with fundraising and promotional efforts aimed at encouraging participation by others in the disability community.

Working as a one-on-one teacher’s aide at Taradale High School, he is now looking forward to attending an eight-day Activate course at Outward Bound.