About 59º North

Who We Are

Andy Schell & Mia Karlsson started 59º North in 2015 and the mission then was as simple as it is now — “Sharing the wisdom of the high seas with those wise enough to seek it out.” Since then we’ve covered over 100,000 miles and sailed with nearly 1,000 different crewmembers from all walks of life. 2024 will mark our 10th full season running offshore passages for paying crew.

Today our core business remains ocean sailing, and we sail with two boats we own — our Swan 48 ISBJØRN, the boat that started it all back in 2015; and our Farr 65 FALKEN, the rebuild of which we completed in early 2023 — and once or twice a year, on chartered race boats for some of the iconic ocean races. We sail all over the world and each boat has a distinct sailing schedule depending on your taste. We’re not a formal sailing school and we don’t teach to a curriculum — instead, we teach seam’nship through real-world experience that is impossible to duplicate in the classroom.

Additionally, we teach seam’nship thru our online membership platform The Quarterdeck, produce three different podcasts about sailing, write articles for a variety of sailing magazines around the world and occasionally offer in-person workshops on everything from Celestial Navigation to Weather Routing and Offshore Prep.

59º North got it’s name because it’s the latitude of Stockholm, Sweden, near which Andy & Mia live on a farm in the countryside, and started with Andy & Mia running the entire program, from building the website and producing the ON THE WIND podcast to skippering the passages. As we’ve evolved, we’ve made friends with some wonderful people around the world who quickly became part of the team.

Today 59º North is owned by a group of us (with Andy & Mia holding the majority), most of whom work in some aspect of the business, and we have a team of over a dozen people scattered around the world helping to run the show, from admin and finance to media production, boat maintenance and passage planning.

THE BOATS WE SAIL

  • S&S Swan 48 'ISBJØRN'

    ISBJØRN covers the High Latitudes outside her home port in Bergen, exploring the Norwegian fjords, High Arctic Spitsbergen, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Scotland, Sweden and the North Sea.

    1972. S&S Design. Built by Nautor in Finland as a classic IOR-era racer-cruiser. Sails with skipper plus 5 crew. The boat that started it all for Andy & Mia when 59º North was founded in 2015.

  • FARR 65 'FALKEN'

    FALKEN sails far and wide, covering 15,000+ offshore miles per year crossing oceans and the Equator and calling at bucket-list ports along the way. Sail across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, cross the Equator, cruise the Caribbean and sail northern waters in Alaska, Greenland, Norway & Sweden.

    Built in 1999 by Colvic Craft in the UK to go round-the-world. Modified interior by Bob Perry, electrical systems by Nigel Calder. Sails with skipper & mate plus 8 crew.

  • Offshore Racing

    The Offshore Racing program offers a week of pre-race training with our professional staff followed by the race itself and a comprehensive debrief.

    For 2024, Nikki Henderson will lead crews on two of the classic offshore races — The RORC Caribbean 600 in February; and the Rolex Middle Sea Race in October. We’ve chartered performance XP yachts for each, both boats fully outfitted for offshore racing.

Where we sail

Podcasts We Produce

The Quarterdeck

“Deep dives on the art of seam’nship.” Founded by Andy Schell & August Sandberg, The Quarterdeck's mission is to go deep into the art of seam’nship by sharing knowledge we've earned over tens of thousands of miles on the high seas, critically examining our own experiences & decision-making, & using the collective wisdom of the group of passionate sailors who join us in The Quarterdeck community to become better sailors ourselves.