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Accessible boating: wheelchair friendly marinas, slipways and sailing clubs

If you use a wheelchair, the first question before any boating trip is simple: can I get onto the pontoon at all? No official register answers it. But OpenStreetMap volunteers have recorded wheelchair access for 377 marinas and slipways, either fully wheelchair friendly or partly accessible. This page shows them on a map and in a list, each linked to its page in our marina directory.

You will also find sailing clubs and federations offering accessible sailing for people with and without disabilities, and the official licence rules for skippers with a disability in Germany, Austria and Spain.

Places
377
Wheelchair accessible
232
Partly accessible
145
Accessible toilet
30
Slipways
30

The places on the map

Solid circle: wheelchair accessible. Ring: partly accessible. Square: slipway. Click a marker to jump to the place in the list. Zoom with the buttons, by double clicking, or with Ctrl and the mouse wheel.

All marinas and slipways with wheelchair access

What wheelchair accessible means here

The data comes from the OpenStreetMap key wheelchair. Accessible means step free access, with step free rooms. Partly accessible means at most one small step of under 7 cm, with the most important areas step free.

It does not tell you whether the pontoon is wide enough, how steep a floating pontoon gets at low water, or whether there is a hoist into the boat. So call the harbour master before you go; where a phone number is known, it is on the marina page.

OpenStreetMap wiki: key wheelchair

Sailing with a disability: where to find clubs

Germany: The German Sailing Federation (DSV) keeps a list of member clubs offering inclusive sailing for people with and without disabilities. You can search it by region or view it as a map, and each club entry describes its offer: DSV clubs with inclusive sailing (in German).

Austria: The Austrian Sailing Federation (OeSV) runs a para and inclusive sailing section. It names clubs such as the Segelclub TWV on the Achensee, the Yacht Club Velden with an inclusive team, the Union-Yacht-Club Traunsee and the Sportförderverein für Vision Integration in the east, and provides Mini12 boats for beginners: OeSV para and inclusive sailing (in German).

Spain: Under its statutes, published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the Royal Spanish Sailing Federation recognises adapted sailing (vela adaptada) as one of its official disciplines.

Boating licences for skippers with a disability

Germany: The official recreational boat licence requires a doctor to confirm physical and mental fitness (section 6 of the German licence regulation, SpFV). A disability does not rule the licence out: if the doctor certifies conditional fitness, conditions are written into the licence to make up for the limitation. Only insufficient colour vision cannot be offset this way. No licence is needed on federal waterways for up to 11.03 kW combustion or 7.5 kW continuous electric power.

Austria: Under section 119 of the Austrian Shipping Act you need no certificate of competence for a motor boat below 4.4 kW, whether electric or petrol.

Spain: Royal Decree 875/2014 allows people with a disability who hold a recreational licence to skipper boats adapted to their disability, provided the adaptation keeps the boat safe. A boat adapted by its builder gets an initial inspection by the Dirección General de la Marina Mercante; one converted by another yard needs an additional survey (second additional provision). In Germany and Austria, which lake allows which motor is listed on our page on lakes with engine bans.

More in the marina directory

All marinas by cruising area, with contact details, are in the marina directory. Slipways for trailer boats are in the slipway directory (in German).

Sources

Marinas and slipways: data from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL licence. No guarantee of accuracy, as of October 19, 2026. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Land areas of the overview: Natural Earth. openstreetmap.org/copyright

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