Forget #VanLife, meet the women who are ditching the nine-to-fives for a watery world, taking to the oceans in pursuit of sun, sea and sustainability
Karin Syrén was a 22-year-old architecture student when she met a young American sailor named Brian Trautman on a spontaneous trip to Auckland, New Zealand. At the time, Syrén, who was born in Stockholm and raised in Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city, had never set foot on a sailboat. But when Trautman proposed a trip to the nearby Waiheke Island aboard his 53-foot sailboat SV Delos, the young Swede threw caution to the wind. They departed the next day.
During their two-week trip, the pair sailed around the island’s rocky bays and sandy beaches, catching lobster, visiting wineries, and hiking along trails that crisscrossed emerald landscapes.
“I immediately fell in love with the sailing lifestyle,” she reminisces. “Being so close to nature really blew my mind — and, of course, Brian was a factor as well.”
Since then, the couple has circumnavigated the globe on the two-mast sailboat, visiting six of the seven continents and sailing every major ocean in the world. They’ve rounded the Cape of Good Hope three times, braved the Roaring Forties winds in the Indian Ocean, and journeyed from Brazil to the Caribbean and up to Canada. Along the way, they’ve amassed 817,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, where they chronicle their life at sea: the good, the bad, and the straight-up terrifying (from 30-foot waves to aggressive bacterial infections). Three years ago, their crew expanded with the birth of their first child, Sierra, who boarded the SV Delos at just four months old.
“This lifestyle isn’t for everyone,” admits Syrén, now 34 years old. She notes the difficulty of being far away from family and friends, but also says that “there’s something beautiful about the freedom to pick a place on the map and just go.”
The Trautmans aren’t alone. In recent years, there’s been an explosion of people across Scandinavia who are trading their mortgages and nine-to-fives for a life at sea. Haters will say it’s just the newest trend in DIY adventurism — like #vanlife, but on water. But for many of these full-time sailors, the YouTube cheques are just a fringe benefit. Particularly among climate-conscious young people, who’ve watched as activists like Greta Thunberg advocate for boat travel, the real lure is carving out a more sustainable and more self-sufficient existence.
Sissel Therkildsen and Leonora Valentin will set sail on a multi-year voyage later this year.
“I think more people are opting out of conventional lifestyles and aiming for a greener existence that isn’t so materialistic,” says 24-year-old Sissel Therkildsen, who together with fellow Danish sailor Leonora Valentin, will embark on a multi-year circumnavigation later this year.
The two friends met in high school in Copenhagen and bonded on diving trips to Thailand, but it wasn’t until summer 2020 that they discovered a mutual passion for sailing. On a summer trip to Denmark’s North Sealand with Valentin’s father, the girls learned the ropes of the sport and developed an appreciation for the unhurried pace of sailboat travel.
“I fell in love with the simplicity and the peace and quiet,” says Valentin. “When you’re on the water, you can’t schedule anything — the wind and the conditions decide when and where you’ll arrive.”
Like Therkildsen and Valentin, 23-year-old university student Mathilde Borregaard Gajhede is also new to sailing — she only started in 2019. But she’s already purchased a boat and racked up close to 30,000 followers on her Instagram.
Gajhede has noticed a huge uptick in interest among her peers, which she credits to the popularity of the hit Danish TV series Sail for Distant Shores. The show follows host Mikkel Beha Erichsen (the son of Danish adventurer Troels Kløvedal) and his family as they travel the globe in a sailboat. Gajhede also believes the pandemic pushed Danes to do more exploring at home.
“A lot more people started vacationing within Denmark,” she notes. “They bought summer houses and started sailing.”
Gajhede dreams of the day when she’ll be able to follow in the footsteps (err, wake) of full-time sailing YouTubers like Malin Löf and Johan Hammarlund, the husband-and-wife duo behind RAN Sailing. The Swedish couple started sailing full-time in 2016, travelling from Europe to Africa and across the Atlantic, where they spent one year in the Caribbean Sea. Their longest journey took them from the Panama Canal up to Costa Rica and then Hawaii — a 30-day, 4,400 nautical mile-journey.
“We could have never afforded to visit these places by plane,” says Löf, who worked as a social worker before sailing full-time.
Currently, the couple is living on a farm in Österlen, where they’re building a 50-foot sailboat for their next big adventure: navigating through dramatic fjords and heavy ice floe in the Northwest Passage. But for now, they’re enjoying being back home and going on local sailboat trips in Skåne.
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“In Sweden, we have so much coastline and several archipelagos, so there’s a lot to explore,” says Hammarlund. “Seafaring is deeply rooted in our culture and our history.”
For 49-year-old sailor Helena Laursen, who was born in South Korea and has lived in Malmö for 20 years, there’s no place she’d rather be sailing. “We have one of the world’s most beautiful archipelagos,” she says. “And with constant weather changes, they’re also challenging waters.”
Photo: Getty.
The interior architect and designer walked away from a successful career working for brands such as Mats Thelius and IKEA to launch her own sailing tour company in 2021. “I started a new career and a new life entirely based on my passion for the sport,” she says.
Laursen offers beginner courses that teach participants the basics of setting sail, safety, wind direction, and docking the boat in a marina. A typical four-day itinerary through the Öresund strait might include morning swims, cooking fish on an open fire for lunch, and watching the sunset from a scenic spot.
“I love it,” Laursen says of her new lifestyle. “It’s an indescribable feeling to travel by the wind, surrounded by the ocean, and with no jet lag or fossil fuel usage. I mean, what’s not to like?”