The things people actually ask

Yes. Ellinor is chartered bareboat, so the person you name as skipper must hold a coastal sailing licence, a VHF certificate, and be able to show real experience on a yacht of this size. Everyone else on board can be new to sailing.

What I ask for is an ICC, RYA Day Skipper or higher, SKS, or an equivalent national coastal licence. The insurer asks the same.

Almost certainly yes. This is the question I am asked more than any other, and the short list above confuses people because it is written in British and German terms.

I accept national coastal licences on their merits. A French permis mer with an FFV level, a German Sportbootführerschein See, an Austrian FB1 or FB3, an Israeli Mashit 30 or 60, a Polish or Dutch coastal certificate: all of these are the normal European picture and none of them has been a problem.

Some countries, France among them, do not issue a private sailing licence at all, only a motor licence plus a federation grade. That is not an obstacle either. Tell me what you hold and why your country issues it that way.

Send me a scan early rather than late. It takes one email to settle and it is better settled before you book a flight.

A Short Range Certificate (SRC) or your national equivalent. A GMDSS certificate exceeds the requirement and is accepted.

One thing worth saying plainly, because it has come up: an aviation radiotelephony licence does not count, even where it is graded higher. Maritime VHF runs on a different basis, with its own channels, its own procedure and DSC distress calling, and the yacht has a fixed VHF/DSC set that needs a licensed operator aboard.

If you do not hold one, it is usually a one-day course and in some countries it can be done online. I would do it regardless of whether you end up chartering from me.

Enough to have handled a yacht of roughly this size yourself, in coastal water, rather than crewed on one. A short sailing CV answers it: years sailing, the largest yachts you have skippered, roughly where and in what conditions.

Lofoten is a step up from a week in the Mediterranean or the Adriatic. The tidal range is over three metres, and katabatic gusts come down off the mountains in otherwise flat calm and can be double the ambient wind.

That does not rule out a newer skipper. What I would say is bring one crew member with real miles behind them. With fair weather and little experience there is no problem at all. When it turns critical, a second experienced head on board is worth more than any certificate. That is from my own experience rather than from a rulebook.

Yes, and I would rather do it that way round. Send scans of your licence and radio certificate and I will tell you where you stand before any money moves.

If it helps you to have it in writing, I will put the confirmation into the charter agreement itself, naming your certificate and its number. One charterer asked for exactly that and it was no trouble.

Yes, as crew. Only one person needs the licence and the experience. Ellinor sleeps six comfortably, eight berths in total, and there is room for people who have never been on a yacht before.

Svolvær (SVJ). It is a few kilometres from the marina and that is the whole journey.

The usual route is to fly to Bodø and take Widerøe from there to Svolvær, which they operate several times a day. In the summer season Widerøe also run some direct flights from Oslo, so check those before you book the Bodø connection.

Harstad/Narvik Evenes (EVE) has more international traffic and looks tempting. It is 169 kilometres from Svolvær, around three hours. There is an airport bus from Evenes into Svolvær town centre, so it can be done without a car, but it is a long leg at the end of a travel day. A hire car is the awkward option: you cannot drop it in Svolvær, so you pay for the whole week and drive it back, and several of the rental desks there close at 14:00, which has caught people out. Unless you are making a road trip of it, fly to Svolvær.

Taxi is the simplest answer: about seven minutes, 25 to 30 euros.

One piece of local knowledge that saves standing in the rain: the taxi number is +47 07550, and when you call, choose the Norwegian language option. If you select English they often do not answer. The TaxiFix app avoids the phone call altogether.

Local buses run between the airport and the town as well. The timetable shifts with the season, so rather than print times that go out of date, put the route into Google Maps on the day and it will give you the current departures.

Book a taxi ahead for your departure in particular. An early morning pickup in Svolvær is not something to leave to chance.

Yes. There is parking at the marina and it has been free. Tell me your registration number before you arrive.

If you are driving from central Europe, plan a night in or near Svolvær on the day before. The charter starts on Saturday afternoon and ends on Saturday morning, and you do not want to arrive off a long drive and go straight to sea.

No. There is a Rema 1000 and a Coop Extra within an easy walk of the pontoon, about five minutes. You can do a full week's shopping and carry it back in a couple of trips, which is what most crews do. If you would rather not carry it, a taxi for that short hop costs very little.

If you would rather not shop at all, I can arrange full provisioning for 40 euros per person per day.

The yacht and all her equipment. Bedding and towels for every berth. The full galley: pots, pans, plates, cutlery, fridge and freezer. Cooking gas, two bottles, which is normally more than a week. Safety equipment and the life raft. The tender with its outboard. Fishing rods and a crab trap. A wifi router with a Norwegian SIM. The handover briefing, a cruising guide and a route plan. VAT, so the price you see is the price you pay.

End cleaning is the one thing that sits outside the weekly rate. It is EUR 300, mandatory, and charged once per charter rather than per week, so a two-week booking pays it once. It covers a normally used yacht and there is nothing further to pay unless she is left in a poor state.

This is the question behind the question, and it is a fair one.

Fuel, usually 100 to 250 euros over a week depending on how much you motor. Harbour fees of about 350 Norwegian kroner a night when you tie up, and nothing at all when you anchor. Electricity at the pontoon is sometimes inside the harbour fee and sometimes a small extra, depending on the harbour. Your own provisions. Your travel to Svolvær.

That is the entire list. There is no fuel surcharge, no linen fee, no cleaning fee on top of the one in the price list, and no charge for the tender or the rods.

Ellinor is insured for hull damage and third-party liability. The excess under that insurance is paid by me, not by you.

For insured damage that does not involve gross negligence, your liability is limited to the security deposit of 1,000 euros. That is the worst case for an honest accident, and it is written into the charter agreement rather than being a promise in an email.

So you do not need to buy a separate damage waiver. Many charter companies sell one for a few hundred euros a week; here the cap is already in the contract.

What is not covered by that cap: gross negligence or intent, sailing under the influence, breaking the terms of the agreement, and failing to report damage when it happens. Report it and you are protected. Hide it and you are not.

Not in the end, but you do have to send it, so plan for it.

One thousand euros goes to our account by bank transfer 14 days before embarkation, and comes back to you by bank transfer within 7 days of handing the yacht back in order. That deadline is in the charter agreement, not just in this answer.

We do not block it on a credit card, so the money genuinely leaves your account for about three weeks rather than sitting as a hold.

It is not part of the charter price and in the normal case you get all of it back.

Tell me the week you want. I will hold it for you with no deposit and no obligation while you decide, and nobody else gets it without a call to you first. Outside the July peak that costs me nothing, so I am not going to invent pressure that does not exist.

Then, in order:

I send the charter agreement, four pages plus a crew list annex. You fill in your details, sign it and send back a scan. A photograph of the signed pages is fine, and a digital signature is fine.

I invoice the booking deposit, 30 per cent of the total. Once that is paid the week is yours rather than merely held.

The balance, 70 per cent, is due no later than 60 days before embarkation. I send a reminder in good time, so you will not have to remember it.

The security deposit of 1,000 euros and the crew list are both due 14 days before embarkation. The crew list needs names, dates of birth and passport numbers, nothing more. The deposit is back in your account within 7 days of handing the yacht over.

Everything is paid by bank transfer, SEPA or SWIFT. We do not take cards, so there is no card fee either.

More than 60 days before embarkation, the booking deposit is refunded in full. Between 30 and 60 days, half of what you have paid is refunded. Less than 30 days, there is no refund, but the charter can be moved to another date within 12 months if the calendar allows.

One addition worth knowing about. If you are travelling from a region where flights can be suspended at short notice, say so before you sign and we can write a provision into your agreement covering exactly that. I have done it for a charterer from Israel: if the journey becomes impossible, the week moves to the following season with everything paid credited against it, rather than being lost. Ask and it is no trouble.

Separately, I recommend travel and cancellation insurance of your own. The yacht's insurance does not cover your trip, your belongings or your flights.

Mid-May to mid-June: air usually 8 to 14 degrees, water 8 to 10. The midnight sun starts around the end of May, so by June there is no darkness at all, which changes how you plan a day. You can leave an anchorage at nine in the evening and lose nothing. Settled spells are longer than later in the summer and the anchorages are empty.

July: the warmest month, up to around 20 degrees on a good day, midnight sun until roughly mid-July. Also the busiest, and the weeks go first.

August to 20 September: the harbours empty out after the middle of August and the nights come back, which means the northern lights become possible from late August. In July they are not, because there is no darkness to see them in. You will also meet more days of strong wind. Ellinor does not leave harbour when the official forecast exceeds Beaufort 7, so build slack into a September plan and do not book a tight connecting flight home.

The thing to watch in any month is not the forecast wind but the katabatic gusts off the mountains. They arrive without warning in otherwise calm conditions. Reef early near the walls and you will have no trouble.

It happens, more often later in the season, and Svolvær is a good place to be stuck. The same list works if you arrive a day early, which I recommend anyway.

There are two floating saunas on the water, one at Svinøya Rorbuer and one at the Thon Hotel. Sitting in a hot sauna watching a gale come across the harbour is a better afternoon than it sounds. Both are booked ahead rather than walked into.

Indoors there is the Lofoten War Memorial Museum, the Magic Ice bar, a local brewery that runs tours, and galleries and cafés around the harbour. If someone in the crew has under-packed for the cold, there is an outdoor clothing outlet in town, which has rescued more than one charter.

If the wind is up but it is dry, the walk to Fløya and Djevelporten starts at the edge of town, climbs stone steps to around 590 metres and takes three to four hours there and back. The view over Svolvær and the harbour is the best in the area. Take care coming down, the steps are harder to descend than to climb. From up there you look across at Svolværgeita, the Goat, the rock pinnacle that climbers come to Lofoten for.

Further afield, if you have a car for the day, the Viking museum at Borg is worth the drive.

Ask me on the day. I will tell you what is worth doing and what is not.

Think spring sailing in the Baltic rather than summer anywhere. Proper offshore oilskins, thermal base layers, a fleece or two, a warm hat, gloves and sailing boots.

Bring sunglasses and sunscreen as well. People forget them because they associate the Arctic with cold rather than with twenty-four hours of sun coming off the water.

Ellinor has a diesel heater that warms the whole boat in about twenty minutes, so anything that gets wet dries overnight. There is also a full cockpit enclosure with side panels, which in practice means you sit outside in a shirt when it is five degrees and blowing.

Both, and you decide how much of each.

There is a seven-day route on this site as a starting point. A week out of Svolvær comfortably takes in Skrova, the Trollfjord, Henningsvær, Nusfjord and Reine, around 140 nautical miles with short hops between anchorages.

What I add at handover is the part the charts do not tell you: which anchorages hold when it blows from the north, where the tide runs hard through the sounds and at what time, and where to go when the forecast turns. You leave with a cruising guide and a route plan built around your crew rather than a generic one, and I am on the telephone for the whole week rather than office hours.

Then the wind decides. Most crews change the plan at least once, and there is enough shelter inside the islands that a week never has to be spoiled.

There is a wifi router with a Norwegian SIM on board, and I would rather undersell it than have you arrive expecting an office.

In the harbours and around the towns the coverage is good. Inside the fjords and behind the mountains it drops out, sometimes completely, and the data allowance is limited rather than unlimited. Treat it as a convenience for a forecast and a message home, not as a working connection. If you have to be reachable for work, bring your own plan and do not rely on the boat.

The marina has wifi as well, which is the better option for anything that matters.

Yes, and this was asked by a family of five who then booked.

Three double cabins: the bow cabin is 200 by 160 centimetres and the two aft cabins are 200 by 150 each, plus the saloon sofa. Two heads with hot showers. The diesel heater warms the whole boat quickly and the full cockpit enclosure makes a cool evening pleasant rather than something to endure.

Lofoten is protected water for most of a normal route. Child life vests on request. I would not recommend it for children under six.

Yes. Rods, lures and filleting gear are on board, along with a crab trap. No licence is needed for recreational saltwater fishing in Norway. Cod, coalfish and mackerel are the usual catch, and cod turns up almost anywhere, which younger crew tend to enjoy.

No. There is one yacht and one owner, and that is deliberate.

Most charter yachts in Norway belong to a fleet: you book through a platform and are handed a boat by someone who has never sailed her. Here the same person answers your first email, hands you the keys in Svolvær, tells you which anchorage to run to when the forecast turns, and picks up the telephone at two in the morning.