The Zeelander team is thrilled to announce that Sietse Koopmans, the CEO and Owner of Zeelander Yachts, has received the coveted Voyager’s Award at this year’s World Superyacht Awards ceremony in Amsterdam.

Sietse Koopmans

The Voyager’s Award recognizes an owner that has made extensive use of their yacht in long distance voyaging and exploration over the past few years. Sietse spent 3 years and 3 months circumnavigating the world on board motor yacht Zeepaard. During this amazing once in a lifetime trip, Zeepaard visited 39 countries, sailed over 50,000 nautical miles with Sietse taking more than 40,000 photographs.

Superyacht Zeepaard is a 37.2m explorer designed by Vripack and built by JFA Yachts. The world tour began in July 2009 in Malta. There was no exact route planned and no time schedule had been set. The journey started in the Mediterranean and continued to Florida, the Caribbean, Cuba and Panama cruising on to the Galapagos Islands through to Polynesia, Fiji, down to Australia, then on to Indonesia up to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, across to Sri Lanka, through the Suez Canal and back to the Med.

Zeepaard yacht - ex Axantha I - in Borneo Indonesia - Copyrights Zeepaard

Commenting after the prize giving ceremony Sietse added “We are honoured to receive such a prestigious award and especially when up against such stiff competition from CaryAli yacht, superyacht Exuma and charter yacht Sherakhan”.

As CEO of Zeelander Yachts, Sietse Koopmans has used all his previous engineering experience and his time on Zeepaard to develop and bring to market the prestigious line of Zeelander yachts that are taking the luxury yachting market by storm.