So, who and what are we here at Onboard Space? Founded and run by Spain based Tensia, and the social media/blogging side run by UK based Rich, we are a new form of crewing agency connecting amateur skippers and crew.
How do we operate?
There are two groups of people we need to sign up on our platform – skippers and crew.
As we get the platform working, so we need a pool of skippers looking for crew to sign up. You can browse our crew pool for people suitable to come sailing with you. There are all sorts of skippers we can help – you may be planning a delivery such as the ARC Race or simply be looking for crew to do a local/amateur ocean race with. Another group we are happy to serve is the sailing school community, as a recruiting tool for students.
If you’re crew looking for a boat to sail, in theory we should have a wide range of opportunities. You could want to do a longer delivery to escape reality for a few weeks, or simply want to meet new people in your local sailing scene for day trips, weekends afloat or perhaps the odd week.
The people we don’t serve is the professional skipper/crew community. That’s an established market we don’t want to break into thanks to the bureaucracy and regulations involved. You can still be an amateur and want to cross the Atlantic – the Everest of sailing for many an amateur.
In both skipper and crew’ cases it costs €0 to sign up and very little from there. Once you are signed up in your category then we charge around €5 per connection you make. When you get that person’s contact details you make your own judgement as to whether they can walk the walk as well as talk the talk, or simply whether they fit into the mix of your team.
After sailing together you’re welcome to offer feedback.That will feed the wider Onboard Space community with more information as they assess one another for their own trips.
You don’t need to be Alex Thomson to sign up!
Being about connecting amateurs, we recognise that not everyone will have tens of thousands of nautical miles in their logbooks, be it skippers or crew. You could be a skipper of a new boat, a little overwhelmed with sailing your family and just want to get some experienced crew to get going. You could just need someone on the spinnaker sheet next Sunday for the club race and are happy to take on a complete amateur in as part of the fun!
You learn to sail by sailing. If you’re crew with little or no experience, and are honest on your profile that you’re fun to be about but know f@ck all about sailing, you could end up with a boat going beer can racing for a laugh. That’s a great way to learn! Equally you could get a lot of miles in if you are climbing your home country’s sailing qualifications ladder with a view to being a Mate on watch for a big trip/taking your own boat out on that adventure of a lifetime.
The idiot on the dock?
Rich has done the idiot on the dock thing before. I managed to talk myself into a major US sailing magazine’s Olympics correspondents team in 2012. That was a right buzz! It took real time and effort and not a little luck to be in the right time and the right place with the right people in Team USA living in the right place for the local boating magazine that ended up putting me on the right press boat during the selection events!
Similarly, finding a skipper to sail with or crew to get your boat from A-B can be haphazard. There are a lot of bullshitters on the dock! People who dress the right way and talk the right way can put you in deep trouble when the shite hits the fan in a squall or another everyday emergency.
This is why Onboard Space exists – we are a one stop shop for skippers and crew to meet one another, to separate the wheat from the chaff and to get on with having some serious fun afloat!
Sign up at Onboard Space today!
So, if you’ve responded to our advert on Facebook and want to get sailing/find crew, sign up to Onboard Space for free – you never know what you could end up doing!
See you at the dockside
Tensia and Rich
