Freya Hoffmeister

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Freya Hoffmeister (r.) With Birgit Fischer , 2010

Freya Hoffmeister (born May 10, 1964 in Heikendorf , Schleswig-Holstein ) is a German businesswoman and canoeist from Husum .

Life

First, she completed civil servant training for the higher service. The former participant in a Miss Germany competition, in which she finished sixth, used an inheritance to set up an ice cream parlor in Husum at the age of 22 . Over the years she expanded her business into a chain of seven ice cream parlors and a salad bar; In 2012 she runs two ice cream parlors and a large Christmas shop. Two managers and around 40 employees take care of business operations.

Hoffmeister did competitive gymnastics , bodybuilding and skydiving for many years . She completed over 1500 jumps, 500 of them as a tandem jump with passengers. A high point was a tandem jump over the North Pole from an Ilyushin . When Hoffmeister became pregnant in 1996, she went kayaking . From 1997 she paddled - with her little son in the luggage hatch - on waters near Husum. When she is not on the road, Freya Hoffmeister lives in Husum.

Kayak services

In 2003 Hoffmeister undertook her first sea tour along the German and Danish coast. She won the Arctic Sea Kayak Marathon in Norway in 2004; in the 300 km race around Fyn in 2006 she took second place. In the same year she became the overall winner of the women in 2006 at the Greenland National Championships. With a total of eight winners medals, she is the most successful international competitive canoeist in ocean races to date.

Hoffmeister also set records in extreme long-distance drives. In 2007, she and Greg Stamer made the fastest circumnavigation of Iceland in a kayak within 33 days . She later completed the first circumnavigation of New Zealand's South Island as a woman - and as the fourth person ever - again in record time.

In 2009 she circled Australia on a solo trip, as the first woman and the second person after the New Zealander Paul Caffyn (1981-82). Hoffmeister needed 332 days for the 13,714 km circuit, 29 days less than Caffyn. During the circumnavigation, she crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria in a six-day stage, from Slade Point in the north of the Cape York Peninsula to Cape Arnhem in the east of Arnhem Land, 530 km across the open sea.

On August 30, 2011, she began the around 22,000 km circumnavigation of South America in Buenos Aires . The first stage took her over a distance of 7676 km to Valparaíso in Chile , which she reached on May 5, 2012. On New Year's Eve 2011 she circled Cape Horn . The second stage took them to the Colombian - Venezuelan border in 228 days after 7736 km . A third stage began in mid-August 2013 and ended on April 27, 2014 in São Luís, Brazil . She had to contend with adverse conditions on a tropical tidal coast on the northeast coast of South America. Exhausting climatic conditions, pathogens and parasites , mud flats and a mangrove coast with little infrastructure, continuous headwinds and strong surf presented them here again and again with such great challenges that the success of their entire company was repeatedly in question. After she had to cover a more than 1,000 km long section due to the prevailing current and wind conditions counterclockwise, she paddled southwest of Recife since December 6, 2014, the last large section on the way to Buenos Aires, where she was on April 30 2015 arrived. She was the first person to circumnavigate South America in a kayak.

In 2017 she started her next project, the bypass of North America , from Seattle on the Pacific coast . Depending on the season, she paddles in both directions at the same time, i.e. in the arctic summer she paddles clockwise the north route, otherwise the south route in the opposite direction. In 2017 she came on the southern route to Cape Kiwanda , from where she continued the bypass to about Los Angeles in March 2018 . Here she interrupted and traveled to the north route, which had led her to Dry Spruce Island ( Kodiak Island / Alaska ) in 2017 . After a total of 280 days, she arrived at the Naknek River at the end of August 2018 .

Fonts

  • Cape Horn is not given to you! Alone in a kayak around half the world , Cologne: Lübbe 2016, ISBN 978-3-431-03960-3

literature

  • Joe Glickman: Hai Heels - Freya Hoffmeister: a woman paddles around Australia (Original: Fearless ), Bielefeld: Delius Klasing 2013, ISBN 978-3-7688-3587-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joe Glickman: Fearless: one woman, one kayak, one continent. FalconGuides, Guilford, Conn. 2012, ISBN 978-0-7627-7287-2 , p. 1.
  2. ↑ kanu.de
  3. ↑ kanu.de
  4. ↑ Germans circumnavigated South America in a kayak. In: kleinezeitung.at . accessed on May 2, 2015.
  5. ↑ Record kayaker Freya Hoffmeister arrives in Alaska , in: Spiegel Online from August 29, 2018, accessed on January 1, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Hoffmeister, Freya
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businesswoman and canoeist
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Heikendorf , Schleswig-Holstein