A few years ago, I was sitting on a beach in southern Sardinia with some friends from Kiel. It was February, northern Germany was firmly in the grip of winter and we were enjoying the first rays of sunshine and wave rides of the year in Chia. A few days earlier, we had asked ourselves the question of all questions: How do I convert the black zero in my bank account into wind and wave days as sensibly as possible?
Cape Town? Utopian! Tarifa? An endless car journey! Brittany? There's snow there! Croatia? Forget it! There's plenty of wind and bearable temperatures in winter, but there's absolutely no surf! These words came out of my mouth back then. I thought I knew what I was talking about...
My father had learnt to windsurf 27 years earlier. A year later, when I had just been born, he quit his job in Germany to open a windsurfing school on the Croatian island of Losinj. There was a gold-rush atmosphere in the windsurfing business. The surf centre still exists today. Since then, not a year has gone by that I haven't spent a few weeks there working as a surf instructor during school holidays or term breaks.
On that day in Sardinia, we were joined by two Slovenian surfers who were mainly characterised by exaggerating excessively (the nice two-metre waves of the previous days were therefore "at least as high as a mast"). When they finally told us that there might be a real wave spot on the Croatian island of Losinj, I found it hard to stop myself laughing. I didn't believe a word of it. After 27 years on the island, you know every spot! The idea of finding an unknown spot three kilometres away from my second home seemed extremely absurd - and yet fascinating.
You can find these spots in the PDF download below:
1st Martiniscica
2. Mali Losinj / Cikat
3. osor
4. curilla
5 Preluk-Volosko
6th Punat
7th Premantura-Medulin
