FEMINO 

A small shipping company with Gothenburg's southern archipelago as its home port. Femino is one of the newer companies in the region that was founded in the early 2000s by a widow named Lizette, who was married to a man from a family that owned a large shipping company founded in the 18th century. Lizette was born in 1950 and came from a rich family, her father was a doctor and her mother a singer. Already as a child she was more interested in the technical toys her older brothers had than the dolls given to her and she dreamed of working as a captain and sailing across the world's oceans. But her parents did not like the idea that their only daughter would work on board a boat, so she studied to become a science teacher. At the age of 23, she met the love of her life in a small cafe, it was a man who was a little older than her but who had many stories from the sea to tell. He was from a wealthy shipping family in Gothenburg's southern archipelago, which suited Lizette's parents very well. Maybe Lizette hoped that he was the way to the sea for her, but even though she moved to the beautiful island he was from, she spent most of her life on land. It would turn out, however, that her husband, who was one of the two heirs to the large shipping company, had no aptitude whatsoever when it came to numbers or running the shipping company. Lizette became the one who did all the administrative work. Not that anyone knew that she was the one who sat up at night working, as it would look very bad for the family. Every time she tried to state that she wanted to work officially for the company, everyone laughed at her and asked what she really knew about shipping companies and the shipping life. They never had any children and because of that she inherited her husband's share of the business when he died. Since she did not want anything to do with her husband's family as they denied her knowledge throughout their marriage, she sold her share, and for the money she bought a boat and started the shipping company Femino. She promised herself then and there to only hire women to prove all the men who told her that she isn´t competent enough to work in shipping because she is a woman that they are wrong. Today, the shipping company Femino has broken both prejudices and norms with its only female crew and is a tough competitor to the other ships in the region. Lizette, who is over 70 years old today, still runs the company.

Celi 

Captain of the tanker FEMINO since 7 years back. She was born and raised on Donsö in Gothenburg's southern archipelago and began her career aboard her father's fishing vessel when she was only 15 years old. After four years of education, she worked many years as a helmsman on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and spent some of her free months on an alpaca farm in Peru. At the age of 34, she began to long for home and searched for a ship with a home port on the Swedish west coast to be closer to home.

 Check out the Celi collection here

Ylva

Born in Argentina but raised in Gothenburg. Ylva's mother worked on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean where she met Hans. A naval engineer from Hönö who then took as much work as he could on the earth's warmer latitudes, all to avoid the Swedish winters. It did not take long before Hans and María Florencia decided that Hans would accompany her to Argentina and within a few years Ylva came to the world. When it was time for Ylva to start school, the family moved to the island outside Gothenburg where Hans grew up. Ylva followed in her father's footsteps and completed her education as a marine engineer at the age of 27. Like her mother, she has worked a lot on cruise ships and it was on one of these ships that she got to know Celi who a few years later called and asked if she wanted to work as a chief on board FEMNO.

 Check out the Ylva collection here

Annie

Born and raised in the city of Luleå in northern Sweden. While growing up, she has not been so much at sea but fell for the sea when she at short notice after high school decided to apply for a ship in Gothenburg that needed heathermen for one sailed towards the Mediterranean. For the next four years she spent largely on board various sailing ships, but since most of these ships provided only food and lodging and no salary, she lived as long as she could on the money her parents saved for her while growing up. When they started to run out, she applied for a better paid job and after many months of applying, she got a sailor job on board FEMINO, where she has now worked for two years.

 Check out the Annie collection here

Annie xoxo is the more minimalistic version and can be found here

[ Note that this is fictional stories and characters ]