About me

After 35 years working for an automotive group, I decided to turn my hobby into my profession. The skills and knowledge I have acquired can be applied to a surprisingly large extent to the requirements of a sailing trip.

As in the project groups I supervised and led in my professional life, the same applies on a sailing yacht: we have to work together to overcome challenges both big and small.

I headed up the company sailing club for over 10 years. This experience also helps me in my current job. During this time, we hosted the annual Deutschlandpokal Segeln sailing competition twice.

14.500 +

Nautical miles completed, mostly as skipper

Professional sailing trips conducted as skipper

40 +

92 %

Pass rate for SKS exams on my training trips

The various professional activities and experiences can be summarised as follows:

Ensuring IT operations in retail units
Project management for both IT and human resources projects (numerous certificates and in-house training courses)
Conducting training courses and instruction (numerous certificates and in-house training courses)
Over 10 years of managing the company sports division for sailing
Doctoral student coaching (german instructor qualification certificate)

This professional experience is based on my part-time studies and degree in Business Informatics (VWA).

The knowledge and skills listed are extremely valuable for organising sailing trips. Team building in individual projects, in particular, can be wonderfully transferred to a sailing holiday, where participants first get to know each other and want their wishes to be taken into account, even though they have different interests. In a professional project, the career aspirations of the members may also play a role – but during a holiday trip, everyone should be enthusiastic and enjoy what we want to experience in one or two weeks.

I have also gained important experience through my many years as head of the sailing division of the company sports club with approx. 80 members. During this time, we organised two regattas for approximately 300 participants and over 40 yachts each. Route planning, organising moorings in the locations visited, catering and answering individual questions can be easily transferred to the requirements of a commercial sailing trip.

In Detail

The professional experiences

The sailing experiences

I started sailing in 2000. The first few years were spent dinghy sailing on Lake Wannsee to gain an understanding of wind and sail positioning, and soon after that I was sailing yachts, mainly on the Baltic Sea. In 2022, I decided to offer my services as a commercial skipper. After all, I had colleagues on board the yachts in our company regattas, some of whom I had never even met before. So why not explore the fascination of sailing with strangers?

I have now clocked up over 14,500 nautical miles. Three longer trips have contributed to this, but above all the many short trips, which I believe have a big advantage. I can hardly count the number of harbour and anchoring manoeuvres I've done. And those are the ones that simply have to be done right. More than once, I've seen colleagues get tangled up in mooring lines when casting off. Of course, that can happen, but it's not an ideal start to building trust in the skipper.

The Yachts

I have sailed almost every week on a new yacht, from different manufacturers, many of them from the charter business. Since 2023, I have also been sailing more and more on catamarans. Even though the sailing experience is different and these boats do not have the best reputation among sailors, you can still achieve good performance with proper sail trim. Especially when you are on the right course.