Ocean Magazines Personal Profile with the Lane’s

SailAway

Nothing conjures the carefree life quite like lazy days aboard a yacht, family by your side and nothing but the horizon ahead. For Tom and Emma Lane, living the dream starts on Sunday, their 55-foot Fleming. It’s their home away from home, writes Jo Morgan, where simplicity whispers and adventures begin.

t’s true: the Lane family sure loves an adventure.

Buying a yacht was meant to secure the Lane family a free passage around Australia while international borders were closed. But when I spoke to Tom and Emma, they were sitting in the kitchen of The Range, what they call their land yacht, a sprawling 120-acre property in the Byron Bay hinterland. Meanwhile, M/Y Sunday is stranded across the Queensland border. The family is in lockdown and although they can see the sea from their hilltop home, they can’t go near it, let alone cast away on an adventure. Still, they don’t regret their purchase for a minute. Tom and Emma both grew up yachting. Tom, heir to the Oroton fashion empire, spent his childhood on Sydney Harbour with his sailing-mad father, racing under big Australian skies with views of the Opera House. By contrast, English-born Emma, whose father was also boating-mad, spent her childhood on the Thames and around the desperately pretty south coast of England.

Since, the couple has owned boats in Sydney and chartered yachts overseas, cruising Spain, the Seychelles, Italy and Greece. So, when they moved to Byron Bay permanently seven years ago to build the iconic Byron venue The Farm, one thing was sorely missing. A boat. They say it was also high time they properly introduced their children to that idyllic, character-building childhood pastime of mucking about on the water. As Tom reflects, “And then COVID hit. We were like, Oh my god, we can’t travel. What are we going to do? So we did it; we bought a boat.” Sunday was very nearly a sailboat, but there were so few on the market because of the pandemic. Sunday was also nearly a much bigger yacht from a different builder - a 75-footer (22.86-metre) from Turkey, in fact. But what Sunday ended up as ¬ a 55-foot (16.76-metre) Fleming raised pilothouse motor yacht - ended up perfect. And it only took a couple of hours on board with Fleming’s Sydney representative Sam Nicholas to seal the deal. “We just looked at each other and said, ‘We have to buy this.’ And we did, right there. We shocked Sam a bit, I think,” remembers Tom. “But we’d done our research. We’d looked at other yacht builds and they couldn’t do everything the Fleming could offer us – long-distance, liveaboard redundancy and expedition-style adventures.” They wanted a long range, and at an impressive 2,500 miles on one tank, they got it. They also wanted significant fridge and freezer space, with an oversized pantry. “After all, there’s six of us,” laughs Emma.

They needed something with three comfortable cabins that could effortlessly handle bluewater cruising. And a Miele washing machine – four kids, remember? They got it all in Sunday, and talking with the Lanes you can tell they’re delighted with their purchase – and the exceptional 24/7 service from Fleming. They’ve clearly chosen well.

More than a feeling

But the success of Sunday goes beyond her amenities and performance. As every yachtlover knows, the measure of a yacht is also in how it makes you feel when you step on board. And that’s where Emma comes in, bringing her distinctive design style that has made their ventures, The Farm and The Range, such rampant successes. The Range, a Spanish-style finca, is a visual feast of natural, earthy tones, and Emma has taken the house style as inspiration for Sunday’s interior decor. “Just like at home,” Emma explains, “I decided there would be no white walls – that’s a thing around Byron; all white and wicker and timber. And definitely no blue-and-white nautical stripe. “Instead,” she continues, “I transferred the palette from the house. It’s quite earthy, quite natural, even though we’re on the water, which works well with all the timber. Even the plates are timber so they don’t break.

Tom explains, “It’s very much a family affair. We ‘charter’ out our house, The Range, when we’re not using it but this, this is sacred.” He looks at Emma, who nods and adds, “Yes, we’ve talked about having a bigger boat and crew, but I think this is about just us, and us having to take responsibility. Figuring it all out is actually really rewarding.”

Coming into their own

Family togetherness is clearly the driver for this new chapter in the Lane’s yachting lives, and they’re visibly proud of their children’s rapidly growing confidence and ability on the water. Their youngest, Lulu, was initially scared of the waves crashing across the bow but now sits at the helm, asking excitedly where the big waves are. She also drives the tender like a boss. (She’s nine.) The kids’ Sunday sea school education began on their first trip, a five-week, 1,500- mile jaunt up the coast from Sydney to Southport. Tom says, “It was probably one of the best times we’ve ever had as a family because all the kids had to learn to navigate. “We did our first overnight passage as a family, learning the watch routine, learning to read the weather and carrying out all the jobs of anchoring and mooring.

“We’ve even got the kids matching Sunday shirts, and marina staff have commented on how well they handle themselves when coming into port. We’re a regular Von Trapp family!” he laughs contentedly. The original plan had been to head north, up to New Guinea and the islands and also down through New Zealand. COVID has put paid to that too, at least for now, but Tom is upbeat. “It has forced us to look at other places. I mean, I never would have gone to Newcastle – we had a ball there. “We spent a lot of a time in Port Stephens and then Broughton Island, which was incredible,” he continues. “We were anchored, and these old salts saw our boys snorkelling and said, ‘Do they want to see the sharks?’ So we went around the corner and dived down – there were 15 nurse sharks and we were patting them.” These big trips, Sydney to the Gold Coast and then Hamilton Island, have been rites of passage for the Lane family as they all find their yachting groove. But they also use Sunday as a weekender, regularly nipping up to the magical islands of Moreton Bay. “It’s the quickest place to get to and you feel like you’re in Fiji,” enthuses Tom. “We took the boat to North Stradbroke and were feeding the dolphins out of our hands, right off the back of the boat.

“Then the tide went down. All of a sudden, there were sandbars everywhere. We took the tender over and put the drone up. It was incredible.” So, what’s next for the Lanes? Soon, they hope to be reunited with their yacht and travel back down to Sydney. Then on to Tasmania, basing the yacht there for a while. You get the feeling that no matter where the family ends up on Sunday, they’ll have a fine time. Toward the end of the interview, the kids troop in with their floppy-eared pet rabbits. Their dog Ranger joins the party, a Hungarian Vizsla of such a burnished, gleaming rust colour that he fits right in with the surroundings – the earthen ochre walls and industrial hanging lights. It’s an abundant life. An abundance of beautiful children and exquisite design, an abundance of pets and fine houses and business success. But despite all this, it’s still a life where simplicity is craved. And nature, too. A life where time with family, the nucleus of it, as Emma describes it, is still craved. And you find all of that, don’t you, with your kids on a yacht in the middle of nowhere, playing another game of Warlords and Scumbags, drinking a gin and tonic while waiting for the next cry of “Dolphanos off the bow!” That’s the magic of this yachting life right there.