Unexpected Truth

Until now it was undisputed that the german baltic sea can only be surfed when high force onshore winds and a thus rough sea are present. I would argue that we know the eastern german baltic coast and its perks very well. Due to short distances between opposing coasts we never get any real swell and waves are only created by strong onshore winds and immediatly die down when the wind stops. On the contrary poland and sweden are often blessed with clean waves and offshore winds just due to more exposure to the open baltic and more space for waves to be generated although they share the same waters.

This week we were taught differently. To be honest it looked like one of those forecasts that pop up every once in a while and get you tempted to believe that an actual swell could be hitting our shores without any wind but after all you are just beeing fooled by your own hope and misjudging forecasts that in real oceans would provide the slide no matter what – but just dont work here. That was a long sentence. But its true. We never get swell. So we just wanted to give our hometown beach a go in the early morning as it was way below 0°C and a lot of snow around too and a lot of exploration was nothing we were fancying either those days.

7:00 in the morning we checked the webcams from the cozy bed at home and it did not look promising at all. Some small lines but nothing more than ankle high waves. At least there was no wind which gave me a glimpse of hope. So I checked some more webcams closer to where the waves were supposed to be coming from. A random storm generated between two weather fronts that aligned in a perfect straight line from Hiddensee to Fehmarn and left our coast completely windless and the northern parts rambling in storm. There was a slight chance that closer to the weather front there would be some waves rolling through and making their way down to our calm coast.

The webcam looked quite promising and we just gave it go. It took us 1,5hrs to get there and when we arrived the waves were pumping and looked even better than what the webcam had promised. A sight we will probably never forget and a day that we will tell our children about. Haha. No really. It was mindbobbling. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening in front of my eyes. Perfect shoulderhigh waves were rolling in and there was just no wind at all. Just heavy snow, -7°C air and the baltic starting to freeze. Slush everywhere and some ice floes floating around. We joined them quickly, had a 3hrs session and went home speechless.

‌We received a couple of videos through instagram (which you can see on our Instagram) from people that were walking around (Mirco Leinweber, Tilo Pentzins father ;) and Melanie) in the snow that will tell you the quality of the waves and our friends Martin Harms, Leon Lindenberger and Ivonne König were kind enough to capture some of the waves through their lenses.