The Best Sailing Club on English Bay! 2022
New membership is currently full for 2023. Please contact membership@vikingsailingclub.bc.ca if you would like to be added to a waitlist as we may have extra capacity later in the year. We can also answer any questions you have to ensure the club is the right fit for your interests and experience.
Join our sailing community – improve your sailing skills, have a blast and meet new people. Our club is open to sailors of all skill levels.
Please contact Jonathan Verrett, Membership Officer at membership@vikingsailingclub.bc.ca to ensure the club is the right fit for your interests and experience.
Here is the membership fee structure.
Note that the Jericho Sailing Centre Asssociation (JSCA) membership fees are NOT included in your Viking membership payment. Once you pay your Viking membership, please visit the JSCA office to pay the JSCA membership fee, sign their waiver, and update your membership card
For renewing members: go to the Members Area and sign in or if you forgot your password email membership@vikingsailingclub.bc.ca
The Viking Sailing Club is in Vancouver at Jericho at 1300 Discovery street. We are a cooperative style club providing sailing opportunities to our members. There are no additional training fees.
The Viking Sailing Club is a cooperative, nonprofit organization. We do not offer courses of study in sailing, but rather, for the cost of our annual membership dues we provide some initial training to new members from senior members of the club on our beach fleet — that is, our dinghy sailboats that we launch from the Jericho Sailing Centre. The boats we use for training are our Tasars — we have five of them — but we have other boats that members of the club can learn to sail once they have finished training on the Tasars, including the high performance RS-500 and a Nacra 570 Catamaran. A full list of our fleet is here: https://www.vikingsailingclub.bc.ca/our-fleet/
All new members of the Vikings start with a novice rating even if you have previous sailing experience or training. We provide a training calendar for novices to sign up to learn and get rated with senior-rated members of the club. Training opportunities are available from early May through the end of July. The goal of training is to attain an intermediate rating — this is achieved by the demonstrated mastery of basic sailing skills and knowledge. After attaining an intermediate rating, a Viking sailor has unlimited access to our Tasar fleet (subject to wind restrictions) and may learn to sail other boats in our fleet.
We do not offer any certificates or anything that are recognized by other institutions and encourage prospective members to all look at some certification training such as CanSail 1 and 2.
We also have a 34-foot cruise boat named Tyra, which we dock at Burrard Civic Marina. Members are allowed to book this boat at favourable rates (about 1/3 the price of commercial charter rates) and sail with a Viking skipper and a Viking second-in-command. All members are able to book the keelboat. There is no cost for the time of the skipper and second-in-command, we are a social club, so you can usually find someone willing to come on a sail, particularly in the summer months. While Tyra is already booked up for the peak summer months, spring and fall openings are still available. We also have fun cruises throughout the summer. Senior rated sailors have the opportunity to apply for our 2iC (second-in-command) program, an intensive sailing course that takes place in late winter / early spring. Generally members won’t be able to apply for that program until at least their second season with the club — we want members to master dinghy sailing first before moving up to the keelboat.
For more information on training contact our training officer and vice commodore Hope Morris <vice-commodore@vikingsailingclub.bc.ca>
2023 Season Training Schedule for reference
March 31 – Vikings Meet the Members Night @ Jericho Sailing Centre – Everyone welcome, more information here
Classroom/online sessions will take place:
April 13 – Classroom Session #1 – Orientation
April 20 – Classroom Session #2 – Intro to basic dinghy sailing
April 25 – Classroom Session #3 – JSCA Safety Seminar
April 22 and others as needed – Tasar rigging clinic
On water training starts in May
May 6 – Jericho Boat Show open house at Jericho Sailing Centre
After the classroom sessions are completed, rigging of our training dinghies and on the water training will commence. An online training calendar will be available near the end of March. Novices can sign up for rigging and on-water sessions to learn and get rated with senior-rated members of the club.
Keel boat sailing and cruising
There is no better way to start keel boat sailing than to start as a crew on our new 34-foot Bavaria cruise boat. Everyone in the club starts as a crew member, so do not be shy to ask about crewing on the boat. We have fun cruises throughout the spring/summer. As a member you have access to chartering our cruise boat accompanied by one of our many skippers and 2ic (second-in-command) for about a third of commercial chartering rates.
Have a safe and wonderful 2023 sailing year!
Jonathan Verrett, Membership Officer
membership@vikingsailingclub.bc.ca
Membership Benefits
Viking Boats and a beautiful sunset from Jericho Beach
Membership benefits include:
- Use of our entire beach fleet, with appropriate training/rating.
- Highly discounted rates to use the club cruise boat TYRA
- Great club events
- BBQs by the beach
- Sailpast
- Racing
- May Cruise
- Christmas Party
- JSCA membership are not included in Viking membership dues and are mandatory. They include:
- Discounts at The Galley Patio & Grill
- Hot showers and private change rooms
- Boat rescue if ever needed whilst sailing on English Bay
- The opportunity to make new friends
Contact
If you have any questions please feel free to contact our membership officer. If you like you can also arrange a meeting at our club room at the Jericho Sailing Centre (view our club room location) to check out our boats and the club room for yourself.
membership@vikingsailingclub.bc.ca