**My original target was £1500**

After smashing the £1500 target I thought why not give £3000 a shot! Thank you to everyone who has donated so far 🙏🏻

👇Have a read of my story below👇

📸 Follow me on Instagram for more updates📸

📷 @fatyakka 🎥

I have been fortunate enough to have been selected to take part in a once in a lifetime experience, trekking in the Canadian Rockies as part of the Venari Partners Challenge.

I was nominated to take part in recognition of my 26 years of search and rescue with HM Coastguard and the RNLI, spending the last almost 19 years as crew with Weston Lifeboat. But it was also because last year, my life changed.

I went from being fit, healthy and feeling pretty indestructible to going through months of tests, scans and biopsies after I became incredibly unwell out of the blue. After multiple major internal bleeds and hospitalisation on and off through the summer of 2025, I was finally diagnosed with Congenital Hepatic Fibrosis.

For 48 years I had a malformation in my liver that I was born with, but had no idea until it caused severe complications. After several blood transfusions and surgery to fit a shunt in my liver, I am on the road to recovery, but it has been long. This illness not only had a profound impact on my physical health, but also my mental health. Spending months in and out of hospital, being told I had Leukemia, then that they had no idea what was happening, before the final diagnosis. I could no longer train in the gym or head out into the mountains and instead spent days in a hospital bed, planning my own funeral.

So it is quite fitting that in taking on this challenge I will be raising money for Weston Lifeboat Station, to purchase critical search and rescue training kit. With the second highest tidal range in the World and some of the fastest moving tidal currents, 15 out of the 18 lifeboat calls so far in 2026 have related to people in mental health crisis, often in the hours of darkness where our search training really comes into its own.

In September this year, over the course of 8 days I will be taking on some of the best wilderness trails in the Canadian Rockies, covering over 5800m in total accent across just under 100km. A couple of years ago, trekking in the Rockies would have been an amazing holiday for me, but now it will be a real challenge, pushing me physically and mentally, but I can't wait. I'm ready to be me again. I would really appreciate your support, please, if you've read this far take a moment to donate to an incredible cause.