Thanks to many living a decent distance from their boats, London boat owners could benefit from using the Onboard Space crewing community.
To us provincial types, Londoners seem a bit funny, much as you laugh at us. While us fresh air and slow paced life lovers are a bit strange to you, we often look at our black nose bogeys after a run to London and question the sanity of permanently living in smog and overpriced housing.
That said, there are a lot of London boat owners as, unlike many of us provincials you often have a decent amount of disposable income.
Sailing locations in under 2 hours from London
London is a famous port city in its own right but you need to go a few miles down the Thames to get into open water. The Medway in Kent is a famous backwater with cheap moorings and further down the Thames Estuary you have Essex and even Suffolk within range.
Some of the best sailing in the UK is on the South Coast. You can bomb down the M3 and be at a Solent sailing hotspot in 90 minutes, and even at Swanage Sailing Club in the Purbecks in two hours. To the east you have Portsmouth, Brighton and the Sussex marinas within easy reach too – great for popping over to France to load up on booze!
The drawbacks for London boat owners
Us provincial types have the luxury of living inn our own playgrounds. The sailing club can be our local, and our social lives are part of the world that to a certain extent, Londoners can only visit. It might be easier for a provincial to source crew for a planned sailing trip as we eat, shit and breathe the sailing world.
London boat owners, while accepted as part of the community may not find it so easy to source crew. You might be down this way every summer weekend and live in your second home, but the ancient communities of Britain can be quite closed to outsiders! Yes, certain sailing clubs would die without your patronage – even the elite ones – and but for the barrel loads of money you pour into marinas and their trades, sailing would be a very weak industry indeed. You are them, not us, though.
Onboard Space – the open door sailing community
Onboard Space doesn’t give a cuss for parochialism! We are a community of skippers and crew that want to sail together, simple as that. For those ‘wealthy outsiders’ such as London boat owners, we can be a source of sailing crew for almost anywhere you wish to sail, be it at Cowes Week or for a blast across the Channel to load up the bilges with fags and booze!
When you sign up as a skipper looking for crew you can look for the crew you need and for as little as €4 per connection, you can get connected. It is for you to assess whom you sail with, from beginner to highly experienced crew, but from there you have a wellspring of crew for all your sailing needs. Sign up online today!
