Windsurfing in Graal-Müritz - August 22-23, 2026

Mathias Genkel enjoyed a wonderful weekend on the Mecklenburg Baltic Sea coast in late summer

While the spots around Rostock are popular, excellent, and well-known, and the Darß Peninsula - with top spots like Ahrenshoop - has been a household name among wave surfers since the Big Days at the very latest, the town of Graal-Müritz, which lies practically halfway between these areas, tends to lead a rather obscure existence.

The waves at the other spots are more organized and predictable. The sandbar off Graal-Müritz is very deep, so the concentrated force of the ocean usually breaks as a powerful shorebreak between the closely spaced groynes. At the same time, there are essentially no parking spots near the beach anywhere in the entire town.

Windsurfing in Graal-Müritz - August 22-23, 2026

Two very good friends of mine, Max and Sophia, run a perfectly organized surf school called Lonosurf (lonosurf.de) at the local campground (Ostseecamp Rostocker Heide), complete with an attached beach bar that serves high-quality organic drinks and snacks.

Musicians also perform here, and you can enjoy the sunsets over the sea - so numerous in the summer yet always unique - while sipping a drink and listening to live piano music.

Then you forget that you’re in Germany; instead, you almost feel as if you’re in the Caribbean. The nearby coastal forest creates an incomparably rustic backdrop. While windsurfing, you look out at the forest and the trees, which always shimmer in different ways as the light from the sky plays across them. I’ve even seen seals and a porpoise here.

And when I’m windsurfing at this spot, I always feel a little closer to the vastness of the sea than at the other spots. Maybe it’s because the coastline here curves in a long arc, jutting out a bit into the Baltic Sea before it becomes more of a bay as it heads toward Neuhaus and Dierhagen.

On that particular weekend, the forecast called for a westerly wind with a very slight northerly component. There are some truly ideal spots right on Rostock’s doorstep, near Warnemünde. However, it has often been the case lately that, despite a favorable forecast, the wind didn’t really shift in that direction, and the first 50 meters remained windless. It feels like this has been happening more and more frequently over the years.

So I was really undecided about where to go. I decided to head to Graal-Müritz and surf the somewhat messy, chaotic waves. Because it’s precisely this unpredictability that makes the spot a huge playground where you can sometimes spontaneously ride up to a one-and-a-half-meter-high ramp and jump perfectly - even after not finding a single rideable wave for 10 legs.

The shorebreak, on the other hand, is all the more reliable, and it breaks powerfully without being too rounded. So we rode all day Saturday with 4.0 and 4.4 kites. At sunset, there was an impressive display of clouds in the sky, and we happened to be photographed by a professional photographer (www.susanne-prothmann.de) who usually takes real estate photos. Although the wind was blowing very onshore at the time, the vibes were all the more laid-back for it.

On Sunday, the weather turned more unpredictable - the water level was higher, and the sky was gray. It rained on and off. On the bright side, the waves had settled into a better rhythm, and Micha, a young surfer who can be seen in the photos with the Duotone sail, filmed a few more clips of me in the shorebreak.

I hope the photos and video give you a little visual sense of the conditions described above. Every day on the water is unique, and we can always be grateful to be by the sea and to be able to practice our incomparable sport.