The skippers are responsible for hosting the beginner- and member sailings throughout the year and are essential for the club to be able to run as a non profit organization with low membership fees. We are always looking our for new potential skippers.
If you’re experienced, responsible and willing to explain and teach sailing to others, you are the person we are looking for. You need to sign up as a regular member first, and need to be staying in Bergen for at least one year.
To become a skipper you need first to be a regular member and sail on our boats to be familiar with them. Then you can contact the Skipper Manager to be considered for Trainee Skipper status. Trainee Skippers can ask the Skipper on Member Sailings to take over more responsibility, including preparing the engine and docking/undocking the boat (getting enough experience depends mainly on the motivation and pro-activeness of the Trainee Skipper: you should reach out to the more experienced skippers and ask them for training sessions, and you should ask to practice docking and giving instructions to the crew while you are on member sailings). Trainee Skippers might get permission from the Skipper Manager to organise sailings together, with at least two Trainees and experienced crew only. When the Trainee Skipper is considered ready, the Skipper Manager will arrange a check-out to assess their skills and make them a skipper.
The check-out list can be found here.
If you, after reading everything in this page and looking at the skipper check out list, believe yourself to be either:
• an experienced member with ambitions to become skipper over time
• able to be a trainee skipper
• or able to be a skipper following 1-2 training sessions on docking and handling our boats
We kindly ask you to fill in this form. After having filled in and submitted, please send an email to geir.loken@uib.no and skippermanager.seiling@bsi.no.
Opportunities as a skipper:
The Skippers host member sailings for the club. The Skipper Manager receives wishes and preferences from the Skippers and sets up the sailings in the calendar on a monthly basis. It is always the Skipper’s final decision on whether a sailing will go ahead on the day (based on weather conditions), and on how long they will sail, and how many crew they will take. The Skippers can add additional member sailings themselves if they want to. These can both be afternoon, full day sailings or longer over night trips.
Skippers are allowed to use the boats for private sailings in addition to member sailing, and set these up themselves in the calendar. For longer private trips (e.g. weekend or week-long trips) the Skipper must apply to the Board first for permission to take the boat.
When funds allow, the club funds the Norwegian boat licence (Båtførerprøven), as well as the VHF radio licence, for an active Skipper who will begin to sail Bella (The Albin Delta, the larger of our 3 boats). Skippers get a copy of each of the sailing books we stock (Sail & Rig Tuning, Seamanship) in either English or Norwegian.
General expectations:
Skippers are expected to be able to host member sailings at least 2 times per month during the sailing season. The club expects at least a 1:1 ratio of member to private sailing days. During the beginner sailings after the bi-annual beginners courses, the Skipper is expected to participate as an instructor.
Requirements and responsibilities:
As a BSI Skipper, you carry responsibility for the safety of our boats and crew.
In order take care of safety and ensure that sailing is enjoyable for our members, we set certain standards.
A BSI Seiling skipper needs to be able to:
Know sailing and boat handling basics well.
Dock/un-dock under both engine and sail.
Lead a crew that know absolutely nothing about sailing.
Consider which weather conditions you and the boat can handle with the crew that is at hand.
Respond adequately to any situation arising when and where you choose to sail.
Therefore it is important that you know the boat, yourself, the conditions that can arise in the area where you sail, what to do if problems arise and that you are able to communicate well with the crew and run the boat by use of the crew.
The Skipper is also responsible to report any damages or faults with the boats, as soon as possible, to the Maintenance Manager.