‘Is it possible to plan from scratch and execute well in under a year?’
In the spring of 2021, Laura Blom-Sipkens and her husband were chatting in their car when a thought suddenly struck her: we should take a break from work and sail across the Atlantic with the children.
“I don’t remember the conversation we were having but suddenly I saw this might be the moment. The kids were in the right grades at school and I thought: ‘We should go. We need to do it,’” Blom-Sipkens recalls.
Life is very busy for the Dutch family. Blom-Sipkens is an anaesthesiologist, her husband, Bas, an orthopaedic surgeon. They often work different shifts. Their three children are aged 11, 9 and 7, and the oldest and youngest have dyslexia. “We didn’t want them to miss classes, so there never seemed to be the right moment,” she says. “But the oldest is finishing primary school now, so it seemed like the right time.”
The couple have sailed since childhood, mainly inshore in small boats and dinghies, but a longer voyage was something they’d been thinking about. “My husband loves sailing. I like it a lot, but I’m more of an adventurer and it’s the adventure that I like,” she says.
Beginning their search for a suitable boat, the couple decided on aluminium or steel construction. After eight months of searching they found a Van de Stadt-designed Samoa 47 laid up on the south coast of France, and bought it. The
