As a Baltic Sea surfer who is not put off by low temperatures, I have gained a lot of experience over the years. Top spots such as Heiligenhafen, Weißenhaus, Ahrenshoop or Neu Mukran are familiar to every north German windsurfer, but I often dream of new spots and higher waves and am increasingly on the lookout for the unconventional. If you look at maps showing the entire Baltic Sea, you can clearly see that Kiel Bay and Mecklenburg Bay only make up a small part of our inland sea. North-east of Rügen the Baltic Sea opens up quite wide and it also gets much deeper here. And right in the middle: Gotland. There must be bigger waves there than here. I had this thought many years ago and haven't stopped studying the forecasts, researching spots and planning a surf trip there ever since.
Every time the forecast was good, my eyes wandered towards Gotland. But it took years for the trip to become a reality."
I was particularly fond of the small island of Fårö in the north-east, which is often referred to as the "Northshore" of Gotland in surfer slang. However, it was never really a good idea to make the long journey there. Either the wind forecast was unstable or it was simply too cold and too dark. I also found relatively little and often very generalised information about the spots there. One online clip I came across in the course of my spot research was called "underpowered on Gotland" of all things. Someone had travelled all the way to the island only to discover on the spot that the promising forecast had vanished into thin air. The poor guy didn't even have mobile phone reception there to check the forecast.
Five metre waves, 35 knots of wind, one to two degrees Celsius
So a few years passed between the first thought of this trip and its realisation. And as is so often the case in life: When you stop thinking about it, things come to you on their own. On Christmas Day - I was checking Windguru and Co. on the cosy couch when my phone rang. It was Markus Marsand on the line. He had seen the forecast for the coming days and actually suggested a trip to Gotland. I was perplexed and couldn't say no. I completely forgot that we were in the darkest time of the year. Five to six metre waves and 35 to 40 knots of wind were forecast for the coming days around Gotland, plus one to two degrees Celsius. At least there was sunshine.
Markus was also the perfect travelling companion for such an adventure in the cold. Together with the Stralsund native, who in my eyes probably jumps the most beautiful backloop on the Baltic Sea, I had already started some very crazy activities in winter on Rügen, often at the limit of what was reasonable. Once we went to Neu Mukran in a snowstorm only to find that the spot was unsurfable because the first 400 metres were covered in crushed ice. We then drove on to Juliusruh, only to realise after ten minutes that all the equipment was frozen and there was simply no point in surfing.
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!" (REM)
Seek and ye shall find (sometimes nothing)
Let's go! We packed up Markus' girlfriend Swantje in Bad Oldesloe and then took the ferry from Travemünde to Malmö - quite a long crossing, the first of three, but it left on time. The journey to Gotland actually turned out to be quite lengthy. It took us a day and a half in total and the endless wait for the second ferry from Oskarshamn to Visby was a real test of patience. We only reached the third ferry, which crosses the Fårösund, in the middle of the night. According to the Internet, you should then dial a Swedish number to call the ferry. We were a little worried about this, as in the worst case scenario we wouldn't have reached our accommodation and a cold night with the three of us in the van would have been really unrestful. But all our worries were in vain and there were still a dozen Swedish cars waiting with us for the ferry at half past midnight. When we finally reached our quiet accommodation, we fell into a restful sleep, full of anticipation for the next day.
The next morning, we drove excitedly to the nearest spot, Ekeviken. The wind was already blowing very strongly and there was a dry cold with beautiful sunshine, with the sun always staying flat above the horizon, so that everything was bathed in a magical light. We prepared ourselves for impressive conditions. And then the disillusionment: the spot was flat, it was onshore and extremely windy. Had we travelled so far for this? We decided to look for alternatives and quickly realised that it wasn't that easy. Many of the paths to potential spots were marked with "private" signs. At other parts of the beach, the wind was blowing sideways, but it was completely flat. Then there were sections with lots of large stones in the water. We drove on and on and finally ended up at Aursviken Bay, at the end of which there is a reef break.
Too much wind for the 3.3
The wind was so strong here that we opted for the smallest sails: 3.3 square metres - pulled flat. It was our first time surfing on Gotland and the conditions were almost intimidating: the bay is narrow like a fjord and there was a strong current in the centre that drew us out to sea. The wave was also not ideal, closing quickly and the conditions were very onshore overall. You could hardly keep the sail tight. From the water, I saw several cars stop at the previously deserted spot. They were residents of the island of Fårö who were thrilled by our determination and wanted to take a photo with us.
Markus somehow even landed a backloop out there in the inferno, completely overpowered with the 3.3 and we would have liked to have shown even more action, but it was simply pointless in view of the wind strength. We didn't really know what to make of this first session on Fårö. We had travelled a really long way, including three ferry trips, and scoured the whole island for spots. But maybe that's just part and parcel of a discovery trip like this. Although you have to admit that the main problem was really the wind, which was too strong and too cold.
The end of the world
As we had invested a lot of time in searching for new spots, we decided to go out in Ekeviken the next day. The spot is a little reminiscent of Neu Mukran on the island of Rügen. The wave runs quite orderly into a wide, crescent-shaped bay, which is lined with numerous rocks at its edges. Meanwhile, the lighthouse, following a silent pulse, regularly sends out light signals in all directions. The area here felt like the end of the world at that moment, and it is a bit like that: to the north lies the deep sea and then the Gulf of Finland, to the east and south-east the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are over a hundred kilometres away, and to the south Kaliningrad and Gdansk, more than 300 kilometres away.
The session in Ekeviken was solid. And yet, we had come for more. On the road in front of our house, I had seen a jeep drive past in the morning, loaded with surfers heading towards the lighthouse at the eastern end of Fårös. It looked very interesting here on the maps, even though there was no official spot marked. We had a look at this area too, but realised that there was no parking space near the beach, north of the lighthouse, and that we would have had to carry the equipment about a kilometre and a half through a pine forest to get to the spot. That was too much of a challenge in the cold.
"Would Thomas Traversa walk out of here?"
More storms were forecast for the next day. It was all crazy. We had already clung on to the 3.3s in both Aursviken and Ekeviken. The wind was bitingly cold and every time we got out of the warm car on our discovery tours, it became more of a challenge. Our cosy cabin with its warm open fire became a place of longing.
After some deliberation and weighing up the costs and benefits, we finally decided to leave Fårö the next morning and check out a few other places on the north coast of Gotland. The wind was blowing so strongly that we weren't even sure whether the small ferry across Fårösund would be able to cross at all. But we were lucky and it seemed to defy the partly flying water and the rolling sea in the sound. Perhaps I'll summarise the day very briefly at this point: We again spent a lot of time exploring different spots, which is always the same process: First you use Google Maps to find potential beaches. Then you leave the safe country road and drive along a forest track close to the water. Then you quickly put on anything that could provide any kind of warmth, leave the warm car, walk up and down a stony beach in a wind force eight in the freezing cold, which gets into your every limb, and somehow you realise: we're not going out here. Because what we saw in turn was flying water, cross seas, rocks in the break, hollow breaking waves over rocky reefs, gusty side-offshore winds, a break that broke two kilometres off the coast. We used to ask ourselves things like: "Would Thomas Traversa go out here now?". It was real storm chase conditions - but with an air temperature of one degree.
A perfect reef break - but the limits are clear
It may sound a little far-fetched at this point, but the forecasts predicted even more wind for the coming day. It also started to snow heavily in the evening. When we woke up the next morning, Gotland was covered in a thick blanket of snow. We waded through knee-high snow to the car and drove to a beach called Skalasand, which is a little south of Cape Holmudden by the lighthouse. Once there, we saw small, very clean breaking waves running into the bay. Further up on the reef in front of the lighthouse, a solid wave was thundering. We hiked the 800 metres or so there and found a perfect reef break. In hindsight, do I regret that we didn't go out there? Somehow yes, on the other hand: the air temperature was zero degrees and the Swedish media had warned of storms, power cuts and snow drifts.
With every step you take in the icy cold, you realise more and more: you're not going out here today."
We were completely alone at the end of the world. The wind was blowing diagonally offshore onto the open Baltic Sea. The spot was completely unknown to us and there were rocks sticking out of the water everywhere. The wave broke partly hollow and unpredictably close-out over the entire reef. It's actually a miracle that we didn't get frustrated at this point of the trip or that someone didn't start a short-circuiting, "I don't care, we're going out there now!" action. But perhaps it also shows that you have become more mature and reflective over time, respect your own limits and can enjoy what is possible under the given circumstances: recognising the uniqueness of nature, its concentrated power.
The calm after the storm
The calm on the small island of Fårö the morning after the snowstorm became even more palpable, almost tangible, in the clear, cold air. The storm had brought winter. In fact, from that day on, the trip was characterised by winter weather. It was cosy and warm by the fire in our cabin, and the roads were covered in a blanket of snow. The small lakes on the island froze over. A silence fell over the snow-covered, sleeping fields. The white landscape met the deep blue sea on the horizon, over which the moon was rising in the east. From the south-west, the golden but cold rays of the sun, low on the horizon, could be heard, bathing everything in a fairy-like twilight, while new, cold grey ice clouds drifted in from the north.
Maybe it's not always about getting the best conditions on a surf trip, although of course that's always the ultimate goal. But every trip has its very own character. Even if you go to exactly the same place twice, perhaps even at exactly the same time of year, the vibe will never be exactly the same.
Maybe that's what makes it so appealing. Perhaps life offers the seeker exactly what they need, even if they are actually looking for something else.
