G.O.A.T. of Expedition Sea Kayaking

Freya Hoffmeister, born 10.05.1964, also known as ‘Goddess of Love to the Seas, ‘ is a highly skilled open ocean-paddler who has undertaken three world’s greatest time sea kayaking continental circumnavigations.

Freya grew up in Heikendorf near Kiel in Schleswig-Hostein/ Germany.

She finished high school with the "Abitur" at the age of seventeen and got her first education as a senior civil servant (Beamte im gehobenen Dienst) at the Datenzentrale Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel/ Altenholz.

This business was not really to her like, and she spent half a year traveling in South Africa. After changing to University to become a high school teacher for Sports and Geography, she quit after a year to finally join the Jannys Eis Franchise GmbH at the age of twenty-two.

Freya first successfully managed the existing Jannys Eis shop in Husum, Markt 2, and bought it the following year. She quickly opened or took over up to seven Jannys Eis shops in Husum, Hafenstraße 11, Lunden, Friedrichstadt, Heide, and St.Peter-Ording Bad and Dorf, but has cut down business these days back to her leading two Jannys Eis Cafés in her hometown in Husum.

Parallel, she opened an extensive Christmas shop in her main Jannys Eis Café Markt 2 in the winter months. She enjoyed running it for over thirty years before she sold it out in 2019, just before covid could hit the business. Freya also opened and ran a salad bistro in 1996 but sold it soon to an employee.

Freya enjoyed competitive gymnastics from the age of six to sixteen and competitive bodybuilding for the following five years. She was a skydiver with over a thousand jumps under her belt all over the world, some of them at the North Pole. Additionally, she took over five hundred passengers safely down to earth as the first female German skydiving-tandem pilot.

When her son Helge was born in 1996, she stopped skydiving and got herself her first kayak. For the next six years, she enjoyed calm lakes and rivers with the growing baby son in the back hatch but soon discovered 2002 the ‘real‘ sea kayaking with friends.

Travels to symposia all over the world followed, with invitations to coach Greenland Style rolling, which she quickly learned as an ex-gymnast. A presentation on a kayak meeting about circumnavigating Iceland got her 2007 hooked on that same business.

After three significant islands and (almost) three continents under her belt, she could name herself the G.O.A.T. of expedition sea kayaking –  not to be topped any time soon.

Her First Circumnavigation of North America is still on the way since 2017, estimated to finish 2029-2030.