from Eva-Maria Delfs
"Aloha heja he" rings out from the speakers, a group of thirty revellers sit on the floor, rowing to the chorus of Achim Reichel's song, while as many more dance around them. Disco lights light up the room to the beat. The atmosphere is exuberant and cheerful - amazing, because it is the middle of November and the party participants are sailors, the species that is only really happy when they can be on the water. But the "Anchor Weekend" of the sailing community Soul Sailing Crew, where around sixty sailors from all over Germany celebrate the end of the 2022 season, takes place in Brandenburg an der Havel in high spirits.
A few weeks earlier in Berlin: the "After Sail Party" is the counterpart of another sailing community called Join The Crew. Around three hundred fellow sailors turn up for the opening on Friday evening and the communal boat trip on Saturday, followed by over a thousand at the party on Saturday evening. Anyone unable to attend can watch the video later on the community's YouTube channel and find out the date for the next event in the credits - the "Pre Sail Party" in May.
Sailing communities like this haven't been around for long. They are a mixture of yacht club, berth charter agency, sailing school and, last but not least, a circle of friends and lifestyle provider. They offer sailing opportunities on chartered yachts and are aimed at young adults, with sailing experience being a secondary consideration. What they all have in common is a steadily growing fan base.
The end-of-season events in Brandenburg and Berlin are also attended by people in their early twenties to mid-forties. People who usually didn't even know each other before their first sailing trip and who nevertheless go ashore as friends for life after a week on board together.
Offers such as those from Join The Crew and Soul Sailing Crew make it possible to go sailing without joining a club or attending a sailing school beforehand. They appeal to all those who shy away from high course or membership fees because they don't yet know whether they like sailing at all. Even those who are afraid of regular commitments or don't want to make sailing their number one leisure activity are in good hands with both sailing communities.
The advantages of this new way of sailing are manifold. On a holiday cruise, sailing manoeuvres and terms are learnt rather easily, so that novices can slowly approach the various challenges without having to take part in a training cruise where they would spend whole days practising man-overboard manoeuvres.
While the difference between tacking and jibing is explained to newcomers at the beginning of the week, they leave the boat after seven days with a solid basic knowledge of sailing. Knots, anchoring and operating the anchor windlass are just as much a part of this as realising whether you are cut out for life on board or not.
And many are even gripped by sailing ambition after the trips. It's not uncommon for people to google the requirements for a sports coaster licence or where and how they can go sailing again at home. On closer inspection, the concepts of the new sailing communities are different. Join The Crew, for example, is a pure tour operator where you can book yourself onto a cruise with just a few clicks on the homepage.
Soul Sailing Crew, on the other hand, is a platform that organises private sailing trips. Interested parties go through a dialogue with the skipper before the first trip. If they find that they like each other, a booking can be made. Co-sailors then pay 50 euros per trip as an administration fee. In most cases, the yachts are chartered by the sailing communities for several consecutive crews - i.e. for longer periods of time - which means a price advantage that can be passed on to the co-sailors.
Tour operator Join The Crew pays the skippers a regular salary, so they are working commercially. With the private Soul Sailing Crew, on the other hand, only the costs incurred by the skippers are covered by the on-board fund, but they do not receive anything in return for their job. What the sailing communities have in common is the principle of sailing with friends. At its core, it is always about the love of the sea and sailing as well as the desire to convey a relaxed and easy-going way of sailing on board.
Cruises along the classic routes in the Mediterranean are popular, for example in the waters of Greece, Croatia or Sardinia. However, there is much more variety on offer. In high summer, cruises in Scandinavia are also very popular. And even such unusual destinations as the Faroe Islands and Brittany have already been included in the programme.
Organiser Join The Crew now offers cruises all over the world. Even the wanderlust for Polynesia or Thailand can be satisfied. The offers can be found on the respective homepages. There you can either book directly or make contact for the preparatory introductory talks on the phone.
Join The Crew was founded back in 2007 by sociologist Dominik Grotowski. His idea arose from a lack of fellow sailors for his own trips and the realisation that there was no platform for young people who wanted to go sailing in a relaxed way without being tied to clubs. So he travelled all over Germany for a fortnight to advertise Join The Crew and put up posters at universities.
Today, it employs 14 permanent staff. The team works remotely, i.e. from wherever they happen to be. Right from the start, the motto was "With lots of love". According to Grotowski, this stands for an "honest, relaxed and respectful relationship on board, with the neighbours in the bays and harbours and with the locals and nature". "These values have shaped my life from an early age," says Grotowski, who learnt his love of sailing and nature from his father.
As a child, his parents sent him on sailing or nature camps during the holidays, and as an intern in a social institution, he later learned how difficult life is for young people who lack love and respectful interaction. According to Grotowski, these are the reasons for the values on which Join The Crew is based.
The Soul Sailing Crew was founded by Victor Dominiak and Uwe Dierks. Dierks, who has a degree in physics, has led the community ever since. Even though his grandfather already went to sea, he only really fell in love with sailing in 2014. Within a very short space of time, he obtained all his sailing licences up to his recreational sailing licence and quickly became a skipper for Join The Crew. "But," says Dierks, "that soon wasn't enough for me, I wanted to focus my life entirely on sailing."
In 2015, he used Facebook to find people interested in his first sailing trip. He quit his well-paid job, moved to Berlin and founded the Soul Sailing Crew in 2017 - a platform for private sailing trips with new and old friends.
The inspiration for the name Soul Sailing came from an acquaintance with a French Canadian who accompanied the evenings on the boat with a guitar. These soul music evenings on board and the love of the film "Soul Kitchen" gave rise to the name Soul Sailing Crew. A community that is brought to life by the people. This is also reflected in the structure of Soul Sailing Crew. If skippers have the necessary sailing skills and a suitable attitude, they organise and plan the trips independently without any major guidelines.
Three years ago, the offer was expanded to include the Soul Sailing Charter Agency. Crews who charter a bareboat sailing yacht through the agency are then connected to the Soul Sailing crew.
If you ask the supporters of the new on-board communities what makes this special form of sailing so special, you get answers such as that the interaction with each other is particularly relaxed here. For example, that nobody has to pretend to be part of the crew, but that fellow sailors are valued for who they are. Everyone can bring their talents on board and contribute to the success of the trip. Some people prefer to cook, others are interested in route planning and, conversely, not everyone is good at repairs.
The physical proximity on the ship also means that friendships for life are formed within a very short space of time. This is helped by the fact that conversations about the most personal topics in life take place from the very first evening. And so this answer to the question of what is so special can always be heard: the people.
To ensure that their fellow sailors continue to benefit from the exuberant atmosphere and new friends after the trip, the communities in many cities organise regular get-togethers and other activities. Join The Crew, for example, sponsors dinghy sailing events on Hamburg's Outer Alster, while members of the Soul Sailing Crew organise private hikes or sailing events, such as a weekend of catamaran sailing in Greifswald.
This means that every fellow sailor automatically becomes part of a network throughout the German-speaking world. Anyone who moves to a new city usually already has sailing friends there, as one of the skippers reports, who moved from northern Germany to Munich and was spontaneously greeted with a welcome barbecue.
Because the joy of celebrating is another characteristic of sailing communities. Whether on land or on board. This is favoured by the fact that most trips take place as flotillas. If the boats are not moored in a harbour in the evening, they moor in a packet. Everyone can then go from boat to boat. Music boxes and disco lighting are often on board, and fairy lights are standard in every skipper's bag. Partying in the cockpit at night is as natural as sailing during the day, unless the desire for a quiet evening with guitar music and conversations under the stars dominates.
The feeling of freedom and the experience of nature on the water are also experienced as something very special on board the sailing communities. The moment the wind fills the sails, the engine is switched off and peace and quiet returns, everyday life is forgotten and nobody reads emails any more.
"In this moment, life is simply beautiful, there is nothing bad," says Jasmin, who has been sailing with the Soul Sailing crew for many years. A feeling that leaves the same strong impression on those who are on board for the first time as the great goosebump moments when they see wild dolphins or exotic destinations for the first time.
Typical of the new sailing communities is what they call crewlove. This means that friendly interaction with one another is the top priority. This results in a way of sailing that, at first glance, may not correspond one hundred per cent to what is called seamanship in Germany.
As it is characterised by prudence and care for the crew, according to the supporters, this new form of sailing even goes far beyond conventional seamanship. Because those who really like their fellow sailors always look out for the well-being of everyone. They feel vindicated by their experiences in safety training courses such as the World Sailing Offshore Training in Elsfleth, which was on the winter programme. Caring for each other meant that all groups carried out the exercises efficiently and with the utmost calm, albeit in an unconventional way.
For example, the waves and storm simulator could not dampen the mood of a soul sailing crew in the life raft because, as fellow sailor Kathrin reports, they sang: "To avoid getting seasick, we sang 'Lemon Tree' - although it is different whether you are really in an emergency situation or in a safe wave pool. But the realisation that singing helps and lifts your spirits can make all the difference in an emergency."
Of course, sailing communities also have minimum requirements for their responsible skippers, such as a sports coaster licence and sailing experience. In many cases, there is also the requirement to complete an in-house skipper academy. Some also rely on trial voyages, during which, in addition to ability, assertiveness, conflict resolution potential and character traits such as calmness and balance are examined more closely.
Online courses are offered to prepare for the theory part of this examination. Overall, the training goes far beyond the content of the training for obtaining a recreational coaster licence. In particular, the focus on remaining calm in stressful situations means that there is no such thing as the famous harbour cinema. This is because skippers and crew members communicate with each other in a calm, respectful, almost silent manner. According to this school, a manoeuvre is more likely to be aborted and restarted calmly than forcefully. There have been no serious accidents with Join The Crew and Soul Sailing Crew so far.
Communication between the skipper and his crew begins even before the trip. After booking, the co-sailors receive invitations to virtual meetings and access to the internal crew chat, where they can exchange information and organise their journey together, for example. The sailing communities find new fellow sailors primarily via social media and regulars' tables.
Instagram is typically used actively to share pictures from the trips. The fact that crew members share such posts means that the offer also becomes known to their circle of friends. Some communities, such as Join The Crew, also maintain their own YouTube channel. Or they use other media, such as the Soul Sailing Crew, whose members regularly report on special trips in a podcast. Finally, interested parties can meet fellow sailors from the communities in person at one of the numerous regulars' tables.
While sailing communities were initially a niche phenomenon, today we can confidently speak of a new form of sailing - more than 30,000 people have sailed with the pioneer Join The Crew over the years. A high proportion of women among the skippers characterises the communities, as does the fact that the focus is on age homogeneity. Join The Crew currently draws the line at mid-forties, while the Soul Sailing Crew makes sure that fellow sailors are not significantly older than fifty. This avoids conflicts from the outset that can arise due to different interests, especially when organising the evenings. Repeat rates of over fifty per cent prove that the concepts work in their own way.
Worldwide provider of sailing trips for "young, open-minded people aged 20-39"
Professionally organised network for arranging private sailing trips for young adults
Providers of sailing holidays of all kinds, in various areas and for different target groups
Berth charter cruises in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean under the motto "Active travelling as balm for the soul"
Pure party flotilla cruises with international participants and festival character
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The author Eva-Maria Delfs ( Instagram ) is a lawyer from Berlin and has been sailing since 2011. In her free time, she is often out on the waters of Brandenburg in her Varianta 65 and regularly takes part as a skipper or crew member in sailing community trips, which she became aware of four years ago through a sailing podcast.