Sarah Packwood obituary

My friend Sarah Packwood, who has died aged 54, had many talents – she was a scientist, worked in humanitarian aid and as a disaster preparedness consultant, was a gifted musician and singer, walked the Camino as a pilgrim, and trained to be a Reiki healer and a druid.

Her career in aid and development took Sarah to South Sudan with Save the Children, and to Rwanda with the UN following the 1994 genocide. Between 1999 and 2001, she managed Christian Aid’s emergency programme in Kosovo. There were stints in India, Namibia and Papua New Guinea, and as an adviser to the UK government, for two years on secondment to the Department for International Development. From 2015 she was a freelance consultant, and was working on projects with the UN until recently.

Born in Long Itchington, Warwickshire, Sarah was the daughter of Sean Packwood, who worked for GEC in Rugby, and his wife, Kate (nee Allcoat). After Southam college, Sarah went to St Mary’s College, Durham, graduating in 1991 with a degree in biology, followed by a master’s in rural resource management from Bangor University. She worked at first for the Forestry Commission, but decided to pursue her interest in building a fairer world, and joined Christian Outreach Relief and Development in Kagera, Tanzania.

Sarah chose to stay closer to home when her mother became terminally ill in 2015. While caring for her, Sarah met Brett Clibbery, a Canadian, at a London bus stop, when he was in the process of donating a kidney to his sister Glory. The encounter, the subject of a How We Met feature for the Guardian, led to their marriage on Brett’s boat Theros in Canada and a handfasting ceremony at dawn at Stonehenge in 2017.

After the death of her mother in 2015, Sarah walked the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago in her memory, and in 2016 she and Brett walked the Camino Portugues together, dedicating that journey to the memory of her father, who died in 2006. The couple then returned to the Camino Frances in 2019 and completed the Camino del Norte, along Spain’s northern coastline, in 2022.

As well as playing the guitar, ukulele, and various wind instruments including the flute, penny whistle and recorder, Sarah had been learning the harp and enjoyed songwriting. She posted her music on YouTube, was a member of the London Community Gospel Choir and also helped found Urban Voices (later Urban Voices Collective). Since 2015 she had practised as a Reiki healer, all a part of her philosophy of healing the world in micro and macro ways.

Sarah and Brett spent much of their time in recent years on Salt Spring Island, between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, where they had almost finished building their own off-grid home. Sarah had recently become a Canadian citizen. They had done numerous long sailing trips, but Brett had always dreamed of crossing the Atlantic. They set off from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in solar-powered Theros in June but did not make it to their first destination in the Azores – their bodies were found in a lifeboat on Sable Island, Nova Scotia, a few weeks later.

Sarah is survived by two cousins, Norma and Roger.