liquid medicine

Kayak Canoe Desktop Calendar 2012

2012-01-02T10:00:00.004+01:00

It has benn a long time since I was posting in my english blog. But I would like to share my 2012 Kajak Desktop Calendar (free). You may like some of the pictures . For private use only. For more information watch my German page www.liquidmedicine.de

Download directly here

Greenland for the poor

2010-02-22T09:36:00.004+01:00

This winter the weather brings Greenland into the southern baltic sea... We love paddling in ice conditions!

Ice on the lake

2009-12-21T09:01:00.003+01:00

It´s a fantastic beginning of the winter her in north Germany. Snow and ice. Here are some impressions:

kayaking "Iles de Sanguinaires" Corsika

2009-12-14T11:17:00.005+01:00

On our trip on the shores of Corsika island in France we visited the Iles de Sanguinaires.
A beautiful group of rocky islands that are crested with old genuvesian towers and new lighthouses.

Spectacular view of the island chain

pic by Carsten Pols showing "me"

The tower of the big Ilsands that is still in use.

Carsten resting

Old genuveser tower on the big island.

the lighthouse of Blavandshuk

2009-12-11T18:07:00.003+01:00

On the westernmost point of Denmark we visited the Blavandshuk lighthouse, that was build in 1900 to protect the seafaring ships from the dangerous sandbanks around.

The lighthouse of Livorno Italy

2009-12-07T18:49:00.004+01:00

On our journey to Corsika we needed to stay one day in Livorno, an Italian
harbour town, because of a lack of Ferries. So we had time to explore the maritime history of the city a little and came across the lighthouse which was build 1304, then destroyed in the second world war. Rebuilt in 1956 to match the old tower it´s white Light can reach 24 miles out into the sea nowadays. In the harbour we have seen the traditional Sailing Ship Amrigo
Vespucci, an amazing craft.

Desktop calendar 2010

2009-12-05T21:09:00.003+01:00

If you like to use desktop pictures, you may find a suitable one for you between my 2010 collections. There are pictures from Norway, Corsika, Denmark, Sweden and Germany

Download ZIP file here (size approx. 5 MB)

4 Seals, ice and sunshine, Ingredients for a touring day

2009-01-22T21:27:00.002+01:00

On the Limfjord. Again we are very lucky with the weather. This time even 4 Seals follow us and are curious about our boats. Some ice on the shores. Yes its a perfekt first week of 2009.

Noerre Vorupoer a dansih surfing gem

2009-01-18T09:47:00.005+01:00

Noerre Vorupoer is the southern neighbour of Klitmoelller and a famous surfer spot too. The perfekt conditions should bw Swell from the southern directions. We had nortehrn Swell, but even in those "bad " conditions it was one of our nicest surfing days.

The village is famous in denmark for the fishing boats are pulled up on the shore. There is no real Habour.

Hao was taking pictures in nice light conditions. Cathrin, Carsten and Me where having fun in Swell without wind. Something you don´t come across the baltic sea every day, where we come from.

Ice breaker in The Limfjord

2009-01-15T18:12:00.004+01:00

No wind. Minus 7 degrees, Snow, no waves. What to do in the surfing paradise?
Of course there is a back door. Just 30 Kilometer away form Klitmoeller stretches the Limfjord, a narrow band of brackish water that streches all across northern Denmark from coast to coast. Its easy to find a spot for day touring here:

The shores of the north sea are nice to hike too:

Hawai of the north, the next day

2009-01-12T19:07:00.005+01:00

Force 6 -7 Wind has send caos waves to our "home spot" Klitmoeller (The place we rent a holiday cabin).
So went to see the famous spot Hanstholm first befor launching the boats. But the waves there were really ugly from our view. So we watched the wonderful lighthouse and tryed our luck on the home spot again.

Cathrins cool candle.

Pics from the sormy sea in front of Hanstholm Harbour and the nice lighthouse on top of a 65 meter high dune:

Paddling Klitmöller Hawai of Denmark, day one

2009-01-10T08:38:00.006+01:00

A nice small swell wecomes us on the spot. No real surfer or windsurfer in view. Thats fine we have the spot all to ourselves and the waves are not to big big for us "baltic mini wave riders".

A lighthouse that is vanishing in the sand

2009-01-08T22:29:00.004+01:00

On our visit of northern Denmak we came across Rudbjerg Knude. It´s a Lighthouse already abandoned since 40 years. It´s vanishing in the sands of a moving dune.
As we arrived the wind was blowing force 7. Now we can imagine a sand storm in the Saharra desert. Out to be like this mystic danish place:

Paddling under clouds

2008-12-30T20:41:00.004+01:00

Some days you dont recognize the clouds when you paddle. Some day you do.
This special day had two totally different views for us. onse side was boring, grey the other direction view was just breathtaking great.

We love our small lake for its moods:

Desktop calender 2009

2008-12-28T22:11:00.003+01:00

I tryed to chose some of my sea kayak pictures from the year 2008 for the free desktop calender 2009 that you can download under the following link ( size 1280 x 1024 and 1024 x 760 pix):

http://www.liquidmedicine.de/html_data/funktions_htmls/start.htm

Hope you like it!

This is an overview of the pictures:

Have u seen Santa ?

2008-12-20T20:24:00.003+01:00

I did see him on a saturday surfing session.

A november week in the swedish skerries.

2008-11-15T20:06:00.004+01:00

The last ten years i have been to to Sweden or Norway at least once a year. But it was already november 2008 and I was pretty late. Thus I took one week holidays, to do a spontaneus trip to the eastern skerries south of stockholm.

I was very keen on testing my new P&H Cetus, that I got recently, on his first "longer" camping trip.

Good decision. The possibility to make fire at thze campside made it feel warmer than some of my summer trips. It´s was a silent solo week with the sound´s of nothern nature: nothern baltic seals popping up behind me and blowing like a whale, long taild dugs flying by to check who is this strange orange thing on the water, a complaining couple of Swans in every bay, wind in the pine crowns and the cracking of fire....

When I refilling my car on a swedish gas staion on the way back I read in a swedish newspaper: "Chaos Strom weekend over Sweden".
Well my week was windy and raniy but I did not feel the weather was especially bad.
I haven´t missed a day paddling, what may show how well you can hide between all those islands.

Great trip: I will be back for each of the next 10 years hopefully

A German fjord and the vikings

2008-06-09T11:58:00.006+02:00

Well, you can´t expect towering mountains here at the Schlei fjord like in Norway. But a loveyly sourrounding with sandy beaches, towering beech forests and a cute lighthouse will make for a nice weekend too. The only link to the northern fjords are the people that once lived here: The Vikings with their old city of Haitabu . A rich history of baltic trades and war...

The lighthouse of Behrensdorf

2008-05-17T08:17:00.005+02:00

It is run by the navy was built 1915. The red brick tower is out of funktion since 1996 and only used for the occantional army shooting from Todendorf as a warning signal.
It´s light is carried 40 Meter over the sea:

The sourrounding landcape in mai

Into the rain

2008-04-25T11:05:00.004+02:00

Paddling on rainy days can suck your left energy. But quite often the rain will bring very special weather moods with it too, that can be enjoyed als long as you have enough energy left.

Sea kayaker t-shirts

2008-04-08T12:10:00.002+02:00

At "spread shirt" I tryed to design some T-shirts for me and my friends:

more about that you can find here: http://178478.spreadshirt.net/-/-/Shop/

230 km on the Pembrokeshire Cost

2008-04-08T08:15:00.007+02:00

In may / june 2006 we hiked for 230 km along the breath taking pembrokeshire coast path.

Quite often I wished a sea kayak would have fit into my rucksack. To rent a kayak here is almost impossible unless you are willing to spend a fortune and have a BCU 4 star paper. We have neitehr a fortune nor a " 4 star" paper.
So here are some pictures from the hikers perspective. I start with some arches that we found on our trip.

sea kayak "art"

2008-04-07T11:59:00.006+02:00

I tryed to work with some sea kayak pictures. It´s not truely art, but looks somehow nice. I think :-)

click to enlarge

Wave explosion

2008-03-22T20:20:00.002+01:00

on the batic sea today. more later:

A heavan destination of small islands

2008-03-21T08:53:00.009+01:00

South danish island sea

In autums 2006 my friend Jörg and me went for a long weekend to the danish south eastern baltic sea. The area is famous for it´s small islands and lovely villages. It is a relativly protected area from the wind, so a good alternative when other places are to rough.

We originaly planed a trip to German north sea coast, but the weather forecast was too bad, so we chose this small gem in southern denmark.

The character of the baltic sea in this area is of gentle small island with sandy beaches often accompanied by a sand wall coast. No high walls but nice sand dunes.

Jörg successfully tried his kite to pull his boat. He used his umbrella to comare and found the kite to be much more effective.

The first day a thunder storm came over us just as we had been on a 12 km crossing. Though we where lucky, it didn´t come that bad.

The island are linked with small ferrys, to the mainland of Denmrak.

The last day we where to lazy to continue paddling against a force 6 for another 20 km, so we chose the ferry to come back to our starting point.

Hiddensee circumnavigation

2008-03-13T10:57:00.005+01:00

Hiddensee is a small island in the eastern German baltic sea. A trip around is about 70 kilometer long and is perfekt for a one night camping trip. As the island is part of a natianal park you have to search for another place to camp, on the neraby island of Rügen, where the is a camping place on the shore line.

Here are some pics from this trip in 2005

My try to practise photograpic skills

2008-03-02T09:30:00.003+01:00

This is some of the outcome:

Some wind and waves

2008-02-28T11:46:00.004+01:00

Wind force 6-7 with stronger gusts. The weather was perfect for another day on the baltic sea.
I wish I could have been out with Sebastian..., so I took some pics. The pics can be enlarged by click.

See more on my main page ->

breaking the ice

2008-02-22T09:13:00.004+01:00

This Winter is almost non existant here in northren Germany. At least the temperatures of the last nights produced a thin layer of ice on my lake. Some fun playing "ice breaker" with the canoe and slicing the ice surface of the lake into two parts, from which one part later drifted away, moved by wind.

How does a beached paddler look?

2008-02-18T09:39:00.004+01:00

Like this:

A paddler that cant paddle ...

Paddling 450 km of the German north sea

2008-02-04T10:56:00.000+01:00

In the year 2007 my idea was to paddle the whole German coast line in two steps. First step was the west coast with the very flat north sea shores and the wadden seas. Three month later I wanted to start on the Baltic sea for the nice sandy coastline of the east coast. Well , things often don´t come as planned.

In late Spring my friend Sebastian and me left the shore close to the neatherlands to head out the typical chain of Islands in that area that occupy at least one third of the trip. Always changing between the very flat inner part of the wadden sea and the more exposed outer part of that chain.

Here you need a lot of tidal panning not be grounded somewhere 5 kilometers from land to each side, and no water under the keel. But to fall dry for some hours is also one of the most fascinating things to experience on such trip. The feeling when the water vanishes, then sitting on the bank of a dried out wadden river, looking for all kind of small creatures in the muddy ground. Cooking dinner in the sun relaxing and waiting for the water to come back slowly, which then creeps closer centimeter by centimeter. You can´t wait to keep going again. Then the flood is coming and taking you with speed to the next Island.

There are three national parks on the almost entire German north sea. They have pretty strict rules that you need to take into tidal panning accounts as well. Wild camping isn’t easy but on the margin to the non park areas possible, if you come late and leave early. The Islands are all big sand dunes of 10 to 25 length which means nice beaches on the outside. Between the islands you get the strongest German tidal flows that can become interesting when wind and current come from opposing directions.

At a point half of the trip Sebastian needed to go home because of problems with his cats. I continued 3 days later the rest of the trip solo to the Danish border.

The northern part of the German coast has unique islands called “Halligen”. Those islands are flooded over several times a year by spring tides and storms coming in. Thus the houses stand on small hills (so called: Warften) that keep over the water level in such cases, if the storm is not too bad. Those kind of amphibian Island always fascinated me on my visits. At the end there is the 38 kilometer the long island of Sylt. Home of the rich for the summer weeks. Happy to reach the much more silent Danish Island Römö I finish the trip after approximately 450 km having seen lots of seals, porpoises and different kinds of birds.

A big thank you to the my sponsors: P&H sea kayaks, Globetrotter equipmet, Kokatat dry suits, Kanu-Outdoor, Lendal paddles and Gadermann shop.

Then in the beginning of autumn a strange problem with my stomach keeps me from paddling the Baltic sea. Still fighting with that stomach problem I hope to be out on the batic sea in summer 2008…

A new wing style

2008-02-02T08:30:00.000+01:00

Let me introduce to you the new wing style. It´s called "catrstistyle" technic and it is to be used during wave surfing with a kayak.

The trick is to be so happy during surfing that the paddle is moved by the paddler parallel to the surface of the water high into the air. This will increase speed and fun by the factor 10.
According to the person who invetned the technic it ought to be a brought smile or as an alternative a strange grimace on the face of the paddler to enhance the performance of that move. Another important point is , to keep the paddle in hands up position and to keep it dry under all circumstances. If it shoud become wet, the whole aerodynamics of this technic is spoiled by a film of water on the paddle. That can only result in a fatal wipe out.

:-) ;-) :-) ;-) ;-) :-)

bottle lake

2008-01-29T07:24:00.000+01:00

Our home lake (Plön) is about 10 kilometers long and 2- 9 kilometers wide. The majority of paddlers will pass trough the big lake on the main route to follow the river Schwentine. That way they will miss the the east side of the lake with it´s little secrets. A small secluded bay that is surrounded by decidius trees consistig of weeping willows, beech trees, ash and alder. This bay is a great retreat in the buisy summertime.
The lake has the shape of a west german whine bottle wich has a pretty round belly and a rather short throat, thus I call it Bocksbeutel lake (the name of this kind of bottle).

Surf spots on the western Baltic Sea

2008-01-25T08:31:00.001+01:00

I put some of my favorite surfing spots on the western Baltic Sea into a small discription togehter with some Google earth maps. But it is written in German language on my liquidmedicine.de website.

earth, sun and moon will survive

2008-01-23T09:22:00.001+01:00

What for a wonderful dust around my home yesterday. After Photographing the nice sun down I turned around and saw this clear full moon:

Surfing Westermarkelsdorf III

2008-01-22T10:19:00.001+01:00

This time it´s Cathrins turn to go out into the cold baltic sea.

"wave clean" - washing mashine

2008-01-21T08:22:00.000+01:00

Basti in the washing mashine,

afterwards nice and clean.

More to come from that day...

Surfing Westermarkelsdorf

2008-01-20T07:34:00.000+01:00

I still can´t go paddling unfortunatelly. But at least I can go with my friends to take some pictures when they are kayak surfing. The pictures became better than my average, because when I go paddling too, I will make pictures for 10 minits, then go to the water myself. This time I was photographing for the whole session. At first I like to show you a cool run from Carsten:

Who likes dark , clouds and rain? I do !

2008-01-16T08:55:00.000+01:00

In the spring of 2007 we often went out to catch some waves on our coast. As I am a windsurfer too, I know all the small hooks in the shoreline that produce a little better waves than the everage ones on the tourist beaches. Our small waves normmaly come with westerly winds. This direction in winter and spring normally means rain, fat clouds, realativly warm weather but stronger winds too. So I am always happy if the next deep pressure is heading in from the Sea.

sea kayak desktop calendar 2008 , 12 pics from Norway; Germany, Eastern Canada...

2008-01-09T11:18:00.001+01:00

If you like to change your wallpapers from time to time you might find some intersting pictures in between my 12 sea kayaking pictures for 2008. Free download, private use only. The pictures are in 1280 x 1024 and 1024 x 768 as Zip files and can be found here.

Winter hiking in sand stone cliffs

2008-01-07T20:02:00.000+01:00

We have recently been out for a 3 days winter hike in the national park "Sächsische Schweiz" in eastern Germany. The area is famous for it´s climbing possiblities. As we are no climbers, we where keen on the other characteristical feature of that area. It´s called "boofen". Boofen means that you can sleep in a kind of small caves. There are about 50 offical caves that can be used.

The winter and night temperatures where a nice test of our sleeping bags in winidy conditions without a tent. At -7 and wind force 1-4 two of our bags the profed to be warm. But Sebastian´s in his old bag really had two cold nights in a row.

With alle the snow to melt we did not need to carry water. That made the backpack quite light together with the fact of no need for a tent. But we met a poor guy that was carrying a 30 kg pack around. He was not aware of the caves in advance.

The sandstone formations are spectakular like those on the picture up which shows us hiking the way to the "monkey stones". A realy nice place that was worth travelling 600 km on way by car.
More pictures from that trip you can find here: .

celebrating 0:00 2008 on the the lake in a canoe

2008-01-01T20:03:00.000+01:00

We where talking about it for years: Spending new year on our lake in a canoe and watching the firewoks in the wind shadow of the Island Olsborg. This year we really made it with 5 person on a 10 pesrson team canoe. It was lots of fun to watch and listen the spectacle around new year from another perspective.

But first we needed to work a bit because an over hanging tree had blocked the way in the river that flows from our club house to the lake. So we cut it in parts to give way for the big boat.

The pictures look a little strange because they are long time exposures and the camera lay down on the canoes rim, thus small wakes caused the strange movement.

Norway article in Ocean Paddler VI

2007-12-30T10:15:00.000+01:00

Somehow the cover of the Ocean Paddler 6 seems well known to me :-)

Me and my two friends Cahtrin nad Carsten where paddling in Helgeland Norway for nine days. We where inspired by the pictures from Erik Sjösted´s Blog who has been there several times before and shown the area to the internet community. The place in really magical as the mountains rise directly from the sea level sometimes for more than 3000 feet.

Despite the rough looking scenery you can find sand beaches and meadows to pitch up your tent around every corner of the small islands. Funny was that we met two british paddlers, that where featured in Ocean Paddler 5....

More pictures from this trip you can find here:

Kayaking Denmarks Limfjorden & more

2007-12-27T09:57:00.001+01:00

Searching in my old file libary I found some pictures from kayaking, biking and hiking in Denmarks Limfjorden. A trip that we did 2004. As I have not shown it on the web I thought some of the ipressions might be interesting to watch.

The area is perfect to rent a typical danish holiday cabin. From the "headquater you can go sea kayaking in the arms of the Limfjorden or on the beaches of the north sea. If the wind is right you might get some of the best waves of nothern Europe in Klittmöller, Hanstholm or Nörre. But once the waves get bigger they might be not suitable for sea kayakers anymore. Then you better keep in the inside of the breakwater shadows. But there is more than kayaking. Sand beaches with high dunes that strech over 60 kilometers and that are are empty even in the peak season of august. Thus we took our mountain bikes to explore the nice area from the land side too.
We plan to be back for a long weekend 2008 again...

More pictures of that trip you can find here

glazed frost on the lake shore

2007-12-26T08:11:00.000+01:00

As usual we dont´t get much winter up here in northern Germany. A strong high pressure system was bringing cold temperatures the last days, though. The pretty warm water of the sourrounding lakes was producing fog that froze into the arms of the trees along the shoreline. A wonderful day for an lazy circle with our open canoe.

Kayaking with wales in Quebec, Tadoussac

2007-12-25T08:29:00.000+01:00

It was nat the first time we encountered wales in a sea kayak. Whe had see harbour porpoises in the Geman North Sea occationally. But the mouth of the saugney fjord in Tadoussac Quebec is known as a rich feeding for differnt wale species. So we where haeding out in a rented double oil tanker like doulbe kayak. But who cares the boat if you have the prospect of seeing beluga and minki wales? So against the tide to the main spot, and we are lucky! A minke wale is surfacing 20 Meter to our right. We keep paddling against the tide, thus kann keep our positin. It surfaces again on a totaly unexpected place again. Something that we later learned, was a characteristical for mink wales. Next we turned around, out with the flow into the sait lorent river.

And incedeably lucky again. 6 Belugas are heading straight into our direction. We stopp paddling and wait excited. Like a in a paddlers dream the beluga group is coming closer, popping up and blowing. Soon the reach us. 2 of them dive directly under our kayak. The one on my side seems to wacth me. Its great the water is so clear. That short moment is surely one of the highlights in my 20 years kayaking. Hao my wife is happy too and wants to rent a kayak the next day too, watching wales...
More pictures you can find on my main page in under the button " seekajak":
http://www. liquidmedicine.de

Batlic Sea sea "surfing"

2007-12-21T10:51:00.000+01:00

When the wind comes from The right directions and strength, you can even find some waves on the small western baltic sea. In that case it´s ahrd to bear to sit down in front of a computer not going out. Sometimes my friend Sebastian and me have the time to go out into the windy conditions.

If the wind comes from south-south east, then The Habrbour of the small village Burg is a good place to feel the energy of the waves. At force 5 The waves are small. Like on the day in the upper picture. At Force 7 The Waves get bigger and break on the sandbars in front of the Harbour. Nice but exhausting conditions to paddle into the wind.

Start of the new Blog

2007-12-21T10:32:00.000+01:00

Actually I am wirting an outdoor activity blog since 3 years. But i built an own HTML site. This way I will miss beeing part of the blog community. Thus I will seperate the blog Part form my page to this blog. In the beginning I will put here some older pictures and story from my old blog to not make it look so empty here in the beginning.