Miika Luoto has been sailing since the age of ten. The first sailing boat his parents bought was an Ohlson 29. After Miika’s great-grandmother, the boat was called Matilda. On her, the wholly unexperienced family learned sailing skills in the Finnish archipelago and the Northern Baltic Sea. The family’s second boat, an LA 35 called Matilda Gustava, was bought for longer offshore trips. During several decades, Miika cruised on her the Baltic and the North Sea and, during three summers, the Finnish lake system Saimaa. In the beginning, he sailed with his parents, but after a while his crew consisted of friends and his own family, including eager children.
The dream of long voyages and cruising life had been growing in Miika’s mind for a long time. It became a real plan in 2018, when he was returning with Anna-Maria from a sailing trip to Scotland. They decided that next time they wouldn’t sail back home from so far away but rather continue further. Soon after they found, quite unexpectedly, a new boat for long and challenging ocean cruises: the Swan 47 Ilmatar.
The sailing trip around the Atlantic coasts of Europe in 2022 and the trip to the Azores in 2023 were the first steps towards a maritime life in distant waters and remote archipelagos. Now that Ilmatar has crossed the Mediterranean Sea from west to east, Miika has some 60 000 nautical miles of salty water in his wake.
Anna-Maria Luoto started sailing in 2017. The beginner first tasted maritime life on Matilda Gustava’s Baltic Sea trip from Finland to Gotland, Öland, and the Stockholm Archipelago. The following year she became acquainted with the Atlantic waters on a voyage to Scotland and Norway. Step by step she gathered experience sailing partly twosome with Miika, partly with family crew together with Anni, Joonas and Ohto, as well as some good friends.
Before Ilmatar’s departure from Finland, there were three summer trips in the northern home waters. On those trips, Anna-Maria cruised the archipelagos of Finland and Sweden, visited many Baltic harbours and sailed the North Sea between the Wadden Sea and the Norwegian fjords. During the pandemic, Ilmatar also served as a remote work place until late autumn.
At the latest when she had sailed the Atlantic coasts from the north of Norway to the Algarve, Anna-Maria felt Ilmatar had become her “home number one”. During her first eight sailing years, which include a trip to the Azores and the crossing of the Mediterranean, she has logged some 21 000 nautical miles.
