Hanstholm a few years ago, at the end of March. It's cold, the days are short. The sun stubbornly refuses to rise higher to herald the arrival of spring in the far north. The good thing about days like these is that you can usually ride the perfect waves in front of the fish factory on your own. Apart from maybe a few pain-free Danish locals. The pros are all somewhere in the warm south, the rest of the surfers are still in hibernation. The view over the last hill makes your heart beat faster and makes you forget the hours of travelling through Denmark. Orderly lines peel out of the North Sea and unload themselves, still unsurfed, into the expansive bay. In the distant haze, a ferry fights its way through the choppy sea towards Norway. Otherwise, the dog is buried here today. Only at the very back, where the seemingly endless dune landscape begins, is a lonely, ageing van. Leon and Henrik Jamaer are sitting in front of it, wrapped up tightly, rigging sails and screwing fins.
A few days later: north-easterly storm, Dahmeshöved in the Bay of Lübeck, shortly before seven in the morning. Constant rain. A lone car stands in the twilight behind the dyke, two figures can be dimly seen sliding into their wetsuits under the open tailgate. No need to say who they are. Somehow the Jamaers always seem to be there. Everywhere. In the right place at the right time and as students without a driving licence. Leon (20) and Henrik Jamaer (23) are now both allowed to drive and have also successfully completed their A-levels. They owe it to their older half-brother Daniel, also a passionate surfer and - most importantly - a driving licence holder, that they were able to spend a lot of time on the water earlier.
He was also the one who put his younger siblings on an old waveboard a few years ago and infected them both with the surfing virus. To this day, waveboards have remained the brothers' ultimate ride, as all three have the same passion: a good day out on a big banger, regardless of whether it's summer or winter, sun or snow, near or far. The Jamaers have always had little time for freestyle or other flat water action.
While Daniel, who now works as an engineer in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, can usually only get out on the water at weekends, the two students Leon and Henrik are still quite flexible and know how to make the most of their free time. If the Baltic Sea is flat as a pancake again, Leon and Henrik like to take the surfers under their arms, buy a Schleswig-Holstein ticket from the vending machine - destination Westerland - and surf a few waves without sails. And if all else fails, they spontaneously pack their boards so that they can be on the beach in Brittany in time for the forecast swell after 17 hours of driving in shifts.
This uncompromisingly wave-focussed attitude, coupled with a good dose of talent, is now bearing impressive fruit. Henrik and Leon have also made a name for themselves outside the North German scene with their radical style, consisting of monstrous backloops, twisted push loops and smooth wave rides. Leon has already successfully survived several rounds in the World Cup and at the last Supreme Surf Big Days on Rügen, even seasoned pros like Klaas Voget and Lars Gobisch had to stretch themselves to come out on top in the end. Still.
You can read the detailed portrait of the Jamaer brothers as a PDF download
