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hen asked what frst sparked her lifelong connection to the sea, Anu Peippo, Off- shore Segment Director at Steerprop,

W doesn’t hesitate to recall a childhood memory. “I must have been under ten,” she says. “We were visiting my grandmother’s friend who worked on a vessel carrying paper from Rauma, Finland to Germany.

She was a stewardess on board. I remember being com- pletely impressed that there was a swimming pool on the ship, and the food was so good. That was when the idea began to take root.”

For Peippo, the sea was never far away. Her hometown of Rauma is one of Finland’s maritime strongholds, and her family’s history added to the pull. Both grandfathers had sailed in their youth, one on deck as an able-bodied seaman, the other in the engine room. Her grandmother kept cherished black-and-white photographs: her grand- father posed beside a classic car in Rio de Janeiro with

Sugarloaf Mountain in the background, and in another image standing in front of the pyramids of Egypt. “She always told me, ‘These are from the days when he was sailing.’ And I thought, okay, that sounds really interest- ing,” Peippo recalls.

When the time came to choose a career path after high school, her decision felt natural. She applied to Finland’s university of applied sciences, where she enrolled in the captain’s program. “That was the beginning,” she says. “The maritime world had already found its way into my imagination.”

Anu’s great grandfather Anton Peippo [middle in the back row], working on a sail vessel.

Life at Sea: From Tankers to Offshore

Peippo’s professional seafaring career began with Neste

Shipping, a Finnish state-owned tanker company. She de- scribes it as an ideal start: “The oil companies have very high standards on health and safety. You learn how to do things properly. It sets a foundation.” Sailing tankers car- rying refned oil products across Europe, and occasionally as far afeld as China and Indonesia, gave her invaluable experience—and a taste of the exotic. “I visited Greenland several times, and also Kaliningrad, this unusual Russian territory on the Baltic Sea. It was fascinating.”

But she was hungry for more professional growth. That search took her to Norway’s REM Offshore, where she joined as second offcer. The transition from tankers to offshore support vessels proved pivotal. “On tankers, it’s

Anu’s grandfather Raimo Österman posing usually the captain who does the fnal maneuvering in somewhere tropical on one of his sailing trips.

port. But in offshore, vessels are constantly in and out of harbors and approaching offshore installations. That

Images courtesy Anu Peippo

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2025 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 21