A weekend with the BRIG family at the Hankø Poker Run
There are quieter ways to arrive in Fredrikstad.
On a Saturday afternoon, people stroll along the waterfront, meet friends, have lunch, watch the boats and generally get on with their weekend.
Then a fleet of BRIGs arrives.
It is difficult to be particularly discreet when a group of RIBs comes into town together, especially when they have travelled from Hankø as part of a long-running Poker Run tradition.
For a few hours in June, the waterfront had a little more orange and a lot more horsepower than usual.
And while the people on shore may have wondered where all those boats had come from, for the crews aboard them, this was the end of a rather good day that had started a few hours earlier at Hankø Marina.
It started at Hankø
The Hankø Poker Run has been bringing BRIG people together for years. It is a simple idea: take a group of boats, give everyone a route and a handful of cards to collect along the way, add some food and good company, and see who ends up with the winning poker hand.
It sounds more competitive than it really is.
Nobody is chasing a stopwatch. Nobody is trying to prove a point. The cards simply give the day a little excitement and anticipation, while the route gives everyone a proper reason to untie the boats and go somewhere.
That is probably why the tradition has lasted.
And this year’s gathering was particularly international. The Staff family and their Norwegian BRIG friends and neighbours were joined by Paul and Sarah McCarthy from the UK, Robert and Rebecca from Finland, and Adam Jones of Watercraft Creative, who had come along to capture the weekend for BRIG.
For Paul and Sarah, it was the first time the UK BRIG team had visited the Norwegian operation at Hankø. Adam, meanwhile, was visiting Norway for the first time, having spent plenty of time elsewhere in Scandinavia but never quite making it this far north.
He had heard about Hankø from Atle and Hege at boat shows and BRIG gatherings around Europe. By the time he finally arrived, the place had acquired something of a mythical status in his mind.
It seemed appropriate that his first proper look at it came from the water.
The man behind the marina
Hankø is not just a convenient starting point for the Poker Run.
It is Atle Staff’s world.
Atle has spent decades around boats, including a long offshore racing career in which he collected multiple World Championship titles before turning much of his attention to Hankø Marina.
These days, instead of chasing a racing title, he has created a place where other people can enjoy their own time on the water.
That makes the Poker Run feel particularly natural here.
Atle is still very much a boat person. The racing pedigree is visible around the marina, but so is something else: the enthusiasm for simply getting out there.
The event itself isn’t formal in the corporate sense. It is much closer to Atle and Hege opening the door and saying, come along.
Their family and friends then make the apparently effortless weekend happen.
Mille and Michael are deeply involved. Thomas Nielsen, Atle’s long-time friend and fellow boating adventurer, is part of the mechanism too. Together with the wider Hankø team, they take care of the less glamorous side of a good boating weekend: boats, fuel, route, safety, permissions, catering, accommodation, music, memorabilia and all the little things that participants only notice when they aren’t done.
From the outside, it looks easy.
That is usually a sign that somebody has worked very hard.
A Norwegian morning
The fleet eventually left Hankø Marina and headed towards the first stop at Skjærhalden.
The scenery was everything you might expect from this part of Norway: rocky islands, channels, bridges and small settlements scattered around the water.
The conditions, however, were less obliging.
There was wind and chop, and for the first part of the run the crews had more important things to think about than their poker hands.
When the sea gets lively, even the most enthusiastic boater suddenly develops a very clear understanding of the value of a good destination.
Everyone wanted to get to the stop.
The good news was that the BRIGs were perfectly happy to be there.
The better news was that the weather had apparently decided not to make the whole day quite so challenging.
Skjærhalden changes the mood
The first stop was Skjærhalden.
The boats came together, everyone got something to eat, the first card was collected and there was time to talk. Adam’s description of the stop is telling: hot dogs, drinks, people reminiscing, families laughing and children enjoying the day.
And, somewhere along the way, the weather changed.
The water settled. The clouds seemed less interested in ruining the party. People relaxed back into their seats and the mood aboard the boats changed with the sea.
This is where the Poker Run stops feeling like an organised event and starts feeling like what it really is: a group of people spending a Saturday together.
The Boat Sodas certainly helped.
We won’t explain those.
If you know, you know.
The BRIG family gets moving
Back on the water, the fleet became the kind of sight that makes it very easy to understand why people enjoy RIBs.
There were Eagles and Navigators moving through the Norwegian channels together, from Eagle 6.7s and 8s to the larger Eagle 10s and Navigator 22s and 26s. Adam was aboard Atle’s special Eagle 10, a particularly distinctive custom boat that had clearly earned flagship status long before the Poker Run began.
For Adam, this was also where the boat itself began stealing the show.
At one point, travelling at around 50 knots aboard the Eagle 10, he found himself sitting on the back seat with his feet on the tubes, looking around and wondering, in his own words, what exactly his job had become.
It is difficult to argue with the logic.
A weekend spent travelling through one of Norway’s most spectacular boating areas, surrounded by BRIGs, families and friends, is a reasonably good workplace.
And then we came to town
The final destination was Fredrikstad.
The fleet came down the river together, eventually arriving in the centre of town and rafting up for the final stage of the Poker Run. Adam describes it as a genuinely magical moment: all the BRIGs arriving together, nice and slowly, against the backdrop of the city.
From the shore, it must have looked rather unexpected.
A Saturday afternoon in Fredrikstad is not normally interrupted by a fleet of matching RIBs appearing in formation.
But that is one of the nice things about arriving somewhere by boat. You don’t just travel there.
You arrive with a story.
The final stop was NINI Beach, where everyone gathered for the last card, some food and drinks, and the reveal of the Poker Run winner.
The competition was finally settled.
Nobody seemed particularly eager to leave.
The part that isn’t on the route map
Eventually, the boats headed back to Hankø.
The cards had been collected. The winner had been found. The route was complete.
But the best part of the day was arguably still waiting.
Back at Hankø Marina came dinner, good food, live music and the slower conversations that only seem to happen after everyone has spent several hours on the water together.
There were more Boat Sodas, this time safely on dry land.
And there was still plenty of daylight.
June in Norway has a useful habit of making the evening feel as though it has forgotten to end.
The sun stayed around long enough to see the last boaters head home, leaving the marina with that peculiar late-summer feeling where nobody is quite ready to admit that the day is over.
More than a Poker Run
You could describe the Hankø Poker Run as a boating event.
You could call it a BRIG gathering. You could call it a friendly competition. You could even concentrate on the cards and the winner and call it a Poker Run.
All of those descriptions would be correct.
But none of them quite explains why people keep coming back.
Because the best thing about owning a boat is rarely the boat sitting at the marina.
It is what the boat makes possible.
You take your family somewhere for the afternoon. You invite friends along. You discover a coastline from the water instead of the road. You meet people you might never have met otherwise. An ordinary Saturday becomes a story that gets retold over dinner.
And sometimes a group of people from Norway, the UK and Finland end up cruising together into the centre of Fredrikstad while a visiting filmmaker wonders how he managed to turn this into a job.
That is the BRIG family at its best.
Not a formal club. Not a corporate gathering. Not even necessarily people who knew each other particularly well when the weekend began.
Just people who share a passion for being on the water.
The boats are what brought them together.
The adventure is what keeps them there.
And Hankø is simply a very good place to start.