Plus more winter wellness must-haves
Words by KELLY ATTERTON
Fjord, the Bay Area’s first floating sauna, is a minimalist Nordic-inspired retreat that puts sunlight, salt air, and cold water on the menu. Docked in Sausalito and built atop a salvaged barge, the space offers guests a chance to warm up in a dry sauna, plunge into the Bay, and reconnect with the raw beauty of Northern California.
After stepping away from careers in marketing and technology, cofounders Alex Yenni and Gabe Turner set out to help people experience California’s landscape not just as a backdrop, but also as something to be felt. “We were deeply inspired by what we’d seen in Copenhagen and Oslo, both of which have amazing thermal contrast sauna and plunge sites, often located right on the water,” Yenni says. “Given the temperate, cool year-round climate and the presence of this big, beautiful body of water, it felt like a missed opportunity that nothing similar existed in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Their idea came to life in collaboration with architect Nick Polansky, who drew from the area’s industrial shipbuilding history. The structure repurposes Corten steel shipping containers and is wrapped in local redwood. “We wanted to blend some minimalist California design elements with more of an industrial look and feel,” Yenni says.
The site feels far removed from the routines of daily life.
Fjord has quickly become something of a local institution. Guests check in above the marina, then follow a wooden walkway lined with sailboats to reach the barge at the dock’s end. Surrounded by views of Angel Island and Tiburon, the site feels far removed from the routines of daily life. “That was always our dream,” Yenni explains, “to create a welcoming third space where people connect with each other and with nature in a deeply sensory way.”
While the concept might suggest a younger, fitness-forward crowd, Fjord’s most devoted visitors have been women around age 50 — a demographic the founders didn’t expect but now see as a core pillar of its story. That broader appeal reflects their philosophy.
“We actually don’t talk much about Fjord in wellness terms, even though we’re clearly adjacent to that space,” Yenni says. “We think of it more as a recreational activity. The wellness benefits, physical and mental, are absolutely real, but to us, they’re a happy by-product. Our focus is on joy. Social connections and the simple human pleasure of heat, cold, water, and nature.” thisisfjord.com.
• • • • •
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of C Magazine.
Discover more WELLNESS news.
See the story in our digital edition
