Action Shorts - made for paraplegics on the go!

I've been a paraplegic for 43 years and have spent many years sailing the east coast of Australia. I leave the wheelchair hanging off the stern rail and climb and crawl across the boat. Its hard work and pretty hard on the backside too. To prevent injuries from hot surfaces, pressure and scrapes I have developed a pair of shorts that mimic the cushioning that regular sailors have in their backside when sitting down. I call them Action shorts.

Here I am in Ballina in 1995 coming back from the Solomon Islands on my sloop MoonPenny. I am wearing my Action shorts with a Roho Nexus cushion inside

The shorts are made from neoprene and have to full length zips along the front of each thigh all the way to the waist. This allows you to sit on the shorts and zip yourself in. Inside the shorts, in the area which takes the pressure, I have a Roho Adaptor Pad which is an air cushion that can be cut into different shapes. On my latest pair I have a cummerbund fasted by Velcro.

The shorts want to pull off when climbing over obstacles so I normally supplement them with fireman's clip on suspenders. Perhaps on my next pair I may have the suspenders built into the shorts;.

They work very well at preventing injury and have the happy benefit of being very buoyant, you never sink with these shorts on.

I also have some off the shelf neoprene shorts designed for dinghy sailing which are pretty good too. Here you can see Ronstan's Neoprene pants CL250. These are great when the boat is not throwing you around for example when your cleaning the deck in port. They also make swimming really easy.

Here I am on James Burke with my mate Ed in 2022, I am wearing the Action shorts with the suspenders We are installing the solar array shelter that's above Ed and me.