Deutschland Days

Maui born and bred, Graham Ezzy seems an unlikely transplant to Germany, but for part of year the Hawaiian swaps Ho’okipa for Hamburg and Pacific swells for North Sea surf. Graham reflects on his Deutschland days.

- Graham Ezzy

I come from the land of ‘Always summer’, where you can sail in shorts all year-round, and it is not totally uncommon to see flip-flops on the feet of people at work, no matter the job. But I have left Hawaii to live half the year in Hamburg, where my partner Kathrin is from. Ham-burg is 33 degrees more north than Hawaii, which means the winter days are cold and end early. And obviously, Hamburg is not the windsurfing paradise that Hawaii is known to be.

But the summers tell a different story. In Hawaii, the sun sets on a summer day around 7 P.M., and most people are in bed shortly after “Maui-midnight” - 10 P.M. Summer on Maui is windy, but often without waves, which come to us from the winter storms that track from Japan across the northern Pacific. But up in Hamburg and in Denmark, where the nearest good wave sailing is, the summer sun sets around midnight in June. Which means that a windsurfing day can be endlessly long. When the days do finally end, they begin again at around 4 A.M. -or some other ungodly hour when I’d most definitely rather be sleeping.

RISKY