About · The Seafolk
Why The Seafolk
The Seafolk is a membership club built on one idea: your boat should be a passport to someone else's water, not a cost that sits at the dock.
About · The Seafolk
The Seafolk is a membership club built on one idea: your boat should be a passport to someone else's water, not a cost that sits at the dock.
Most boats spend more days moored than sailing, and sailing somewhere new usually means an expensive charter.
The Seafolk started in a conversation about boats between Soco Núñez de Cela and Ignacio López Martín, two lifelong sailors with very different careers. Soco put the idea on the table: what if we did with boats what HomeExchange did with houses? Ignacio saw the opportunity immediately, and the gap in the market. Owning a boat still only ever gets you your own stretch of water, and sailing anywhere else means paying to charter, an entire extra cost stacked on top of what you already spend keeping your own boat.
The Seafolk connects those two realities: a members-only community where you give a day aboard your own boat and receive a day aboard someone else's, no money changing hands between members, no charter required, turning every boat in the network into another member's passport to new waters.
Non-commercial exchange. Knots are never bought or sold. Members exchange the exact days they host for equal days at sea, give a day, receive a day, keeping the community reciprocal rather than commercial. That is the line between an exchange club and a charter.
Trust, described precisely. Membership is built for boat owners, and that isn't only an entry requirement, it is the trust mechanism itself: whoever sails your boat has their own inside the community. Identity is checked by Stripe. Sailing credentials are declared by each member, and the checker cross-references them against the boat's flag to inform the decision without replacing the owner's judgement. A skipper option is available for members without a licence. And owner and member always speak before anything is confirmed.
On insurance, not one word more than we can hold. There is no policy in force today and no signed agreement with any insurer, and no exchange is covered by one. Our Terms say exactly the same thing. That is why bareboat exchanges, where you sail another member's boat yourself, are closed. What is open is time aboard with the owner present, and exchanges with a skipper. The day there is a policy, it will be said here and in the Terms at the same time.
Authentic connection. The Seafolk gives sailors a way to experience new waters through the eyes of the members who actually sail them, not through a charter company turning boats around for the next paying customer.
Co-founder and CEO
Ignacio has built his career at the intersection of entrepreneurship and the energy transition. After an international career in renewable energy, he set sail aboard his sailboat, Vida, with the dream of circumnavigating the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, bringing renewable energy knowledge to remote island communities. He paused that dream to return to Spain and co-found Cable Energía, a fast-charging network operator for electric vehicles in Spain and Portugal, acquired by Shell three years later, Shell's first acquisition of a Spanish company in more than 60 years. He stayed on as CEO through the integration. Today, through Vida Sustainable Ventures, he backs and builds companies across energy, renewables, infrastructure, and software, and picks up that original dream again with The Seafolk.
Co-founder
Soco has built a reputation for cutting through with bravery and clarity, across global brands including Mitsui, Dolce Hotels & Resorts and Burger King, where she was Brand Director and CMO of Burger King UK. Today she is Global CMO of Deliverect, the unicorn scaleup, which remains her main focus. She also chairs The Magenta Project, the collective born out of the Team SCA campaign in the 2014-2015 Volvo Ocean Race, dedicated to opening up opportunities for women in sailing. It was her question, about whether boats could work the way houses already do, that started The Seafolk.
Both are lifelong sailors who share the same dream: to sail around the world one day, one stretch of coastline at a time. With The Seafolk, they want every sailor to have that same opportunity, to dream, and to explore other seas.
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