SPORTING history was made in Bournemouth at the weekend when adventurer Miles Hilton-Barber became the first blind person to pilot a high-speed catamaran.

Mr Hilton-Barber, who made history last week by becoming the first blind person to pilot a jet fighter plane, joined a team competing in the 2007 Zapcat National Championship on Saturday to sail one of their catamarans.

Mr Hilton-Barber joined co-pilot George "Boris" Stroud from Ellon, Aberdeenshire, at rounds nine and ten of the race.

He piloted the catamaran after being given a safety briefing and just before the pre-race practice sessions began for the contestants.

Speaking after the trip, Mr Hilton-Barber, 58, said: "It was great fun. We completed a lap of a W-shaped course going up to 50mph around bends.

"It was a bumpy ride and felt like we were really high off the water at some points but I really enjoyed it.

"A crew member was giving me directions but it was difficult to hear him at some points."

Mr Hilton-Barber completed the course in 60 seconds, just nine seconds slower than the race leaders.

He said: "Everyone was saying how good that was for a blind man who had never been on one of these boats before but I would have been happier if I was one or two seconds slower instead."

Mr Hilton-Barber, from Duffield in Derbyshire, lost his sight more than 25 years ago but has never let that stop him completing daredevil tasks.

In the last six years alone, Mr Hilton-Barber set numerous world records in extreme endurance events in Siberia and across the Sahara, Gobi, Qatar and Mojave deserts.

He has also climbed in the Himalayas, Kilimanjaro and Mont Blanc; scuba-dived on wrecks beneath the Red Sea; hot-air ballooned over the Nevada desert; hauled a sledge more than 400 kilometres across the icy wastes of Antarctica; and set the world lap record for a blind driver on the Malaysian Grand Prix circuit.

He is the first blind person to fly the English Channel in a microlight and holds the British duel microlight high-altitude record, climbing to 20,300 feet.

In March this year he captured the world's imagination undertaking another world record by completing a 55-day, 21,500-kilometre microlight flight more than half-way around the world from London to Sydney, Australia, relying on revolutionary speech-output technology, accompanied by his sighted co-pilot.

He hopes to help charity Seeing is Believing in its aim to raise £5 million by World Sight Day in 2010.

The charity works to help eradicate preventable blindness in children in the developing world through cataract operations and other medical procedures.

All funds raised by Miles through his Zapcat challenge will be doubled by the Standard Chartered Bank, which also meets all the administrative costs of the charity.