“I was doing winters in the Baltic and the Arctic, exploring waves by car, jet ski, and on foot. I was getting to a point where I was dreaming of a warm cabin on the water,” Freddie Meadows told SURFER. “Instead of having to do strikes and freezing my ass off, the dream was to have a boat and search full-time for better waves.”
Freddie is a Swedish surfer who has spent the better part of the last five years scouring the far northern reaches of Scandinavia. A lot of his searches have been in the Baltic Sea. That is the youngest sea on the planet, semi-enclosed, relatively shallow and always cold. Storms are frequent and create short-periodswells that can, suddenly, reach heights of up to 10 metres. Or as Meadows puts it, “It’s a small and very violent sea. With endless possibilities.”
Magnus Nordmo
Last year, Meadows touched his own north star in terms of surf exploration. Along with Andrew “Cotty” Cotton and Nic Von Rupp, they surfed a mysto slab he called Rán, named after a Viking pagan goddess. The session was described as the biggest waves ever ridden in Scandinavia. A new film on that mission by Morgan Maassen is due to premiere at the Biarritz Wheels and Waves Festival in June, before getting a wider release.
When we called Freddie, he was 68 degrees north, snowboarding at Narvikfjellet, an Arctic resort on the northern Swedish-Norwegian border. His van was stacked with surfboards, snowboards and skis. With no waves off the Lofoten Islands, he was getting late-season powder in the resort’s pistes and backcountry. As soon as the surf turned on, he’d switch focus and be ready to drive to the coast.
“I love that you can get a blast of winter at all times of year up here,” he said. “And on the surf side now we start to move to 24 hours of daylight, exploration is so much easier. I’ll do another a few months up here, and see what I can find.”
Freddie Meadows
In terms of ease of exploration, Meadows has also started to make good on his dream of having that warm cabin. He has sunk his life savings into a steel-hulled boat named Saga. The hull was originally made for a Norwegian fishing vessel, before being refitted by a couple who wanted to split their time between the ice-laden Swedish lake where they lived and the Mediterranean Sea.
Related: Welcome to Hel; Surprisingly Pumping Surf in Poland (Video)
“They did an incredible job on making it liveable, apart from all the electrics, which he rigged like a psychopath,” laughed Meadows. “On my first trial run at sea, the toilet, the cooker, all the heating and electrics all stopped working. The only thing that didn’t break was the sauna that I’d built on the back of the boat.”
Magnus Nordmo
Freddie said he returned from that first trip with his tail between his legs. The scale, and the responsibility of owning, running and navigating a huge sea vessel in harsh conditions was overwhelming. Or in his words, “I was scared shitless on every level.” He thought about selling the boat and walking away, but after a few months, he decided to persevere. “This was my dream. And my new home. I couldn’t walk away from my future.”
This year he has set about transforming the boat from the couple’s design into a fully-working, wave-seeking missile. Apart from stripping the electrics, he has extended the quarters to sleep eight comfortably, created more living space and added a dry room for all the snowboarding and surf gear. He will add a jetski lift on the back and a swing keel so he can sail in shallower waters and manoeuvre in tighter spaces. Eventually, in the wheelhouse space, he aims to build a studio with a projector screen, editing suite and office.
“I want to turn it into a home that is the ultimate exploration vessel for surfers,” he said. Ideally, it could also be an inspiration hub for friends, outdoor lovers and other creatives. People could come onboard and spend time collaborating on projects, or finishing their own.”
Magnus Nordmo
That is all to come in the future. After his stint snowboarding and surfing up north, Freddie will head back to do a few months’ work on the boat, before completing more trials at sea. Assuming all is well, he’ll sail it up the Norwegian Coast and through the Baltic to surf his old discoveries and hopefully make some new ones.
“I have a vision of seeing perfect waves reeling down a point with snow-covered peaks in the background, and my home floating in the channel,” he said. “It’s my joy and passion, it’s my everything. It’s obvious that I can do this every day for the rest of my life. And I’ll still just scratch the surface. And I’m totally down with that.”
Related: Two Surfers Chase Waves Through the Arctic on Sixty-Day Surf Trip (Watch)