Damage Balance On The Day After "Sebastian"

With gusts of up to 150 kilometers per hour, the storm "Sebastian" swept over northern Germany on Wednesday. It reached some of the highest speeds on the North Sea islands. While the damage on land was sometimes great and there were even two deaths, the consequences for sailors were limited overall. However, some boat owners did not get away completely unscathed.

For example, a sailing boat in the sports boat harbor on Amrum could not withstand the gusts of the hurricane and capsized. In Eckernförde a large trimaran drifted onto the stone pier and leaked. Another yacht, which had also broken loose, got off lightly; it got stuck in the mud. Other boats, however, were able to be secured in time by the DGzRS, among others.

The sea rescuers were called to Eckernförde several times. Otherwise, it was a quiet day for the rescue cruiser crews along the coast, according to the DGzRS headquarters in Bremen. No sailor should have been rescued from distress at sea.

Here storm surge, dextreme low water

In many places, problems were not only caused by the wind, but also by the water level. While on the North Sea islands and along the North Sea coast the levels sometimes rose up to almost two meters above the mean flood, so that locks and barriers had to be closed and the fish market in Hamburg was under water, in some places on the Baltic coast the water from the storm was released from the Ports pushed out. In Flensburg, for example, the Hafenspitze fell completely dry.

According to the harbor master, the yachts on the jetties of the nearby Im-Jaich-Stadthafen Flensburg were not affected by this. The situation is different in MarinWendtorf, located at the exit of the Kiel Fjord on the northeast bank. There the water level fell so sharply that the harbor masters were busy until late at night, replacing broken lines or shortening mooring lines. In this way, damage to the ships in Wendtorf could be avoided.

Also further east, where the wind had only blown by 30 knots, the water receded significantly in the evening hours yesterday. Something like that in Heiligenhafen, as the following video shows.

Heiligenhafen the morning after the storm

On the lakes in the south of the republic, where the storm was also somewhat weaker than on the coast, there was still a break. In the Fünfseenland, where waves up to one and a half meters high formed on individual bodies of water, several boats capsized or broke loose and ran aground. They had to be rescued by the water guards and the DLRG.

Pictures of the storm: