From landlubber to longshoreman

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Writer: Anki Palerby Hjelmqwist

In Marina di Ragusa in Sicily, which is the harbour where we are wintering now, we often hear different stories about how people became long-distance sailors and ended up here. Sometimes thanks to the conviction that "it sounds like a great life" and without previous sailing experience. For others, it is a dream they have nurtured for a long time, which has then been allowed to grow.

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Before I met my Captain, I would never have dreamed of becoming a long-distance sailor and living on a boat. I was certainly not a boat person and thought that sailors seemed to be a special breed. There was also nothing appealing about being in a leaning boat in the wind, far out at sea.

But how did I become a long-distance sailor and how did I end up here?

Of course, various factors have contributed to this. Firstly, I met a captain with his own boat who had been summer sailing for most of his life. Then came years of holiday sailing, as it can be for us northerners with a limited number of weeks off and with weather that often leaves much to be desired.

Over the years, a new longing grew, for a life far from the daily grind of the 'hamster wheel', often filled with frustration at the lack of time. After our holiday weeks at sea every summer, I began to miss being in nature for days on end and feeling the wind in my face.

But what tormented me more and more each year was the knowledge that I must have been born on the wrong continent! Hopelessly unfriendly to the climate I landed in, I hate being cold and both the cold and the darkness kill my spirits every winter.

But I'll take it from the top; Landlubber and Sea Scout                                                               

When I describe us, it's usually with words like sun and moon, emotion and reason, or total opposites. Two people could hardly be more different, but we learn from each other all the time and we need to constantly practice communicating to understand how the other thinks.

Despite our differences, there is one essential thing that unites us; we love both the peace and the adventure on board our boat. The magic combination we get as long-distance sailors.

I am Kolbäckaren, the landlubber from Västmanland, who grew up on horseback and who has always loved travelling. Despite a total lack of that kind of excitement growing up, as an adult I have tried skydiving, had four motorbikes, skied downhill abroad and got a diving licence.

In my relationship with my Captain, I am the fearless one with the throttle at the bottom and the one who comes up with fantastic ideas, which ideally should have been implemented yesterday. Perhaps I don't always have a great deal of patience and consistency, but I am practising it.

My captain is originally from Hammarö outside Karlstad and has been sailing since he joined the Sea Scouts at the age of ten. He is an engineer who used to work on assignments where safety is paramount and he is also a safety junkie in his private life.

In our relationship, he is the handbrake, the one who checks the facts, who does his homework and calculations, and who likes to wear both braces and a belt. And a parachute. And an airbag. A safer captain on board is hard to find, and there is always a plan B - and often also a C. Doing things he hasn't done before can be hard for him, and the lack of a plan can put him under a lot of stress.

I myself started sailing when we met in 2012. So it's easy to think that long-distance sailing was Janne's big dream, but it wasn't. He could have continued sailing in the Stockholm archipelago in the summers and been more than happy with that.

It therefore took some time before he understood that I was serious when, year after year, at the end of each sailing holiday, I said "No, we're heading out to sea again! We're not sailing home!" when the bow was set against our home harbour in Lake Mälaren. Slowly the dreams started to grow, what if we could take time off from our jobs to be away for a whole year!

The captain felt that we first had to do our "homework" before we could plan further. We started sailing further and over open sea. It felt both big and very exciting the first time we sailed to Gotland, Janne had only coastal sailing before and I was seasick all the time.

We sailed at night and sailed to other countries, but closer than those I dreamed of. One summer we sailed the Åland archipelago, the next Estonia and Latvia, and the following year we sailed to Lithuania, Kaliningrad and Poland. I took the coastal ship certificate and Janne took a course with Oceanseglarna. We changed boats and slowly went from dream to plan.

Lazy alias Grodan

In 2018 we found our "Sail far away and long" boat, then named Filippa III. She is a Dufour 385 GL from 2005 and was in Karlstad, the Captain's childhood town. For him, it was all flashbacks to come back to his old waters.

We sailed her home across Lake Vänern, via Göta Älv down to Gothenburg and then onwards along both the Swedish and Danish coasts. The yard around southern Sweden took all the holiday weeks that summer as planned. Throughout that season, the boat went under the name Åbäket, as the captain thought she was much more bendy and difficult to manoeuvre than our previous boat, a Hanse 331. However, she sailed well and slowly but surely won our hearts.

The following year, our new boat love was named Lazy (+ a frog emoji), both because it's a funny name, because I've always loved frogs, because it's a French boat and because Lake Mälaren is popularly known as the Frog Sea. Naturally, the frog became the new nickname for our pride.

A year of leave

Although we started to feel mentally prepared, it was heavy with everything that had to be fixed before departure. We had many balls in the air, such as requesting leave of absence, finding and fixing insurance for both us and the boat, equipping the Frog with the essentials, emptying the house of "we don't need this" stuff and personal belongings, relocating the cat, renting out the house, saying goodbye to loved ones and so on. The last car was sold on the quayside a few hours before departure!

In parallel with all this, we continued our regular full-time jobs almost until departure and we only moved on board on the day of departure itself. With hindsight, this is something I would strongly advise against. It is good to have a departure date, but it would have helped us a lot both to move on board and to wind ourselves up as employees much earlier.

It was finally time to set off, with "Southwards!" as the only itinerary. We had been on leave of absence from our jobs for 13 months and had long longed for the adventures on the seas and all the new environments, experiences and meetings on land.      

Now we were there - in the middle of the dream! - and it was just as wonderful, hard, exciting, wonderful and interesting as we thought and hoped! We left Västerås and sailed along the Atlantic coast down to the Canary Islands where we wintered, and then headed north again via Madeira, and into the Mediterranean.

I enjoy cooking, and ideally, cooking should be stress-free. When we started sailing together, I thought there was no reason to eat worse on board than on land, despite the gas stove with only two plates. I shared daily updates on social media and there were a lot of food pictures. "When is the boat cookery book coming?" was a constant question from various followers and it sparked my desire to write a recipe book for sailors.

I was also curious about what other sailors eat at sea. My book idea was based on the idea of sharing different sailors' recipes and at the same time telling a bit about the people behind them. So when we met other sailors, I asked them to lend me their favourite recipes. Without having previously thought about writing a cookbook, the idea emerged and, above all, I suddenly had the time to write it! So now, finally; in March 2025, my boating cookbook "The Ruff Witch's best food tips", published by Vibery Press.

The year on board left a lasting impression. I hoped we would let go of everyday life at home for good even then, but it was not to be. We left Grodan on the Spanish Costa del Sol for future holidays and flew home to return to our previous lives for two years.

It went like that. The longing for the outside world kept coming back. I missed living in the middle of the weather, wind and nature and so did my Captain. At least once a week we asked the question "What are we doing here?" After a lot of calculation, we realised that we could afford to let go, despite not yet reaching retirement age.

Continuing to rent out the house was one part of making the equation work, continuing to work part-time online another. At the beginning of September 2024, we left everyday life and life in Sweden and signed on, without an end date!

Living on board

You quickly get used to living on board. You soon begin to recognise each other's movement patterns and it becomes like a silent dance. Sailing is usually a pleasure, with unlimited time we can wait for the weather to be good enough for a good and safe sail - and as wonderful as sailing is coming into harbour.

That first year on board taught me the importance of time on my own and it was what I longed for most when we signed off. Now that we are stationary in the same harbour over the winter, I make sure to do things on my own, and I know that it also does my Captain good when we are apart sometimes. At the same time, it's great to have common interests and to find new hobbies together.

I have read that long-distance sailors average sailing ten per cent of the time and that is certainly true. If you stay in the same marina for a long time, many new opportunities appear, quite different from when you are constantly on the move.

We have started walking several times a week in a group with people from different countries. Another interest I have developed is playing padel. Here, too, we are a dynamic group from all corners of the world. If you are open and can take the initiative, the possibilities are endless. The most important thing, however, is to be a yes man, as this opens many new doors.

Have we missed life at home since we 'got off'?

No, not for a second have we longed for the stress of everyday life, or for the cold and dark. Sure, we miss our loved ones, but we take comfort in quality socialising in a whole new way when we do get together. Everyone makes an effort and sets aside time to really be able to socialise as much as possible.

In addition to having more quality time with those we love, we have also suddenly become MILLIONaires in time! Because other long-distance sailors we meet are in the same situation, we can nurture our new friendships and get to know each other much faster than when we meet new friends in Sweden.

Contrary to what we guessed earlier, it is therefore faster to have valuable relationships with others, in the life we have chosen to live now! And at the end of the day, isn't that what life is all about?

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Anki Palerby Hjelmqwist

Anki is a freelance writer, author and digital life coach who loves travelling. She has lived in various countries, such as Lebanon, Poland, Egypt and Morocco, and later in life became a full-time long-distance sailor (despite her recurring seasickness!), after meeting her husband Janne. With their boat Lazy Frog, they have sailed from Sweden down the Atlantic coast, across to the Canary Islands and Madeira, and are currently in the Mediterranean, in Sicily. Join her on her adventures, both on land and at sea!

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