Join now

Skipper/sailor needs info and help (Barcelona)

Recently tried to rent a sailboat in the Protected content from the largest fleet around Barcelona, the same fleet I actually rented a 44' from in Majorca in fact several years ago. I'm a lifetime sailor/owner/skipper/racer with perhaps a Protected content skipper hours with maybe Protected content in most all sailboats up to 60 feet and many hours in power yachts up to 80 feet. Licenses to sail and rent in the U.S. (where I’ve owned a 46 foot Hunter Passage for 11 years) are not required and don't exist and there are probably 5,000,000 enormously experienced sailors/renters/boat owners without any such license. The closest thing might be some certification from the American Sailing Association but a lot of those life timers were experts before ASA was founded and never bothered with such. Sailing rental fleets in the U.S. look at sailing resumes such as mine and instantly rent anything in the fleets.
But I'm getting a whole different story here from the biggest rental fleet. I probably have several times the ocean skipper hours the fleet owner himself has, but I'm getting a terse, "no skipper's license, no rental." Unaffected by my information that skipper's licenses don't exist in the 300,000,000 population U.S. he remains curt and completely unhelpful. In fact, I think he last words were "besides we don't rent to Americans anyway." Under these rules JFK and Ted Turner, both lifetime accomplished sailors, the latter a winner of the Americas Cup and a half million other American champions could not rent from his fleet. Does anyone else smell something fishy? Is every American skipper in Internations getting this or is it just me? Any information appreciated.Signed, a "real pissed American skipper."

Barcelona Forum

Our Global Partners