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

Freya Hoffmeister, born October 5, 1964, is known as the “Goddess of Love to the Seas.”  She 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-Holstein, Germany.

She graduated from high school at the age of seventeen and began her first education as a senior civil servant (Beamte im gehobenen Dienst) at the Datenzentrale Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel-Altenholz, Germany. 

Civil service work was not her calling, so she then spent half a year traveling in South Africa. She attended University to become a high school teacher for Sports and Geography, but left after a year to join the Jannys Eis Franchise at the age of twenty-two.

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

In addition, 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 selling it in 2019, just before Covid could hit the business. Freya also opened and ran a salad bistro in 1996, which she eventually sold 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, including at the North Pole. Additionally, she safely took over 500 passengers to the ground as the first female German tandem skydiving pilot.

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

Travels to symposia all over the world followed, with invitations to coach Greenland Style rolling, which, as a former gymnast, she quickly learned. A presentation in 2007, at a kayak meeting about circumnavigating Iceland, hooked her on the idea of doing the same.

After three significant islands and (almost) three continents to her credit, with no challengers in sight, Freya could name herself the G.O.A.T. of expedition sea kayaking –  a title not to be surpassed any time soon.

Her Circumnavigation of North America has been underway since 2017, with an estimated finish in 2029-2030.