About Me

                                                                                                         Who am I?

Hi, I’m Viivi Moisio from Finland. I graduated from a sports high school in 2022, and since then, I’ve been more or less sailing and doing various jobs alongside it, including customer service, coaching/training. Currently, I work as a sailmaker at WB-Sails, a Finnish sail loft.

My sailing background:

I started sailing at the age of 8 in an Optimist dinghy with my older brother. My brother was immediately excited about sailing, while I wasn’t so keen. However, watching him made me want to give sailing a chance. I began attending afternoon training sessions, but still, sailing didn’t feel like my thing. It wasn’t until my mother bought me orange sailing pants and a jacket. And then I was ready to start. :)

I sailed the Optimist and Zoom8 classes for a few years until I was finally tall enough to sail the Europe dinghy. I sailed the Europe for about four years, consistently improving my performance from race to race. However, I started to get tired of dinghy sailing and wanted something new. I had the opportunity to participate in the 6metre World Championships in 2019, which were held in Finland. That was one of my first keelboat races, and I enjoyed it a lot. I sailed the 6metre boat for a few summers, learning its workings, and in 2021, I started skippering it with a young team. I still skipper that boat and aim to bring more young people into classic sailing.

 In addition to racing, I became interested in ocean sailing and longer sailing competitions. By chance, I found an ad in a sailing magazine that a Finnish Swan 55 was looking for crew for a retro round-the-world sailing race. I immediately decided to send a message to see if I could join the trials. I had just turned 18, and the age requirement was 18 years, so I was eligible for the trials. I was sure I wouldn’t get in because I had so little experience with larger boats, but I participated a lot and learned quickly, so I was selected for the Ocean Globe race team.

This started a long four-year project where we prepared both the team and the boat for the Ocean Globe Race, a race around the world with retro equipment, meaning modern navigation tools were prohibited. Over three years, we raised sponsors and funds for the project and carried out extensive renovations on the boat. The idea was that the project wouldn’t cost anything, but all the work had to be done ourselves. Alongside the construction, we sailed a lot and focused on team dynamics, which proved to be very important for the race.

2023 was the anticipated year. The Ocean Globe Race started in September. The start was from Southampton, England, from where we sailed to Cape Town, then to New Zealand, around Cape Horn to Uruguay, and finally back to England. The race lasted 8 months, and we spent from one week to a month on land. The OGR was a fantastic experience, teaching me a lot about myself and others. But most importantly, it has opened many new opportunities for me to develop my sailing career and pursue my dreams.

        

What’s next?

I will participate in the 2026 solo Atlantic crossing race. The race and the boat are a new concept, where competitors sail the Class Globe 5.80 boat, which they can build themselves from plywood. I decided to order my boat's hull from the Netherlands and finish it in Finland. The race starts in Lanzarote and ends in Antigua, covering about 3,600 nautical miles. Woohoo!! Come follow my project here on the blog.