Fuerte' Or Bust

With three days to complete a photo shoot and a last minute diversion across continents, Geraldton based photographer / fireman, Mathias Moerman, charts how a mission to capture Severne’s team and 2020 product in action turned into love at first sight with the island of Fuerteventura.

- Mathias Moerman & Manca Notar

Normally when Ben Severne calls trying to talk me into a windsurfing mission, it’s the night before he wants to leave. Most of the time, like most people, I have things I’m committed to, like work or projects at home, so the answer is usually no, or something to that effect. This trip was different, I had the time booked off work and we had a plan. I like having a plan. In Australia they call me the German, I was born in Belgium but the Aussies in Geraldton have never heard of Belgium, that makes me the German.

THE PLAN

So, the plan was…. Mauritius for 2 weeks. Windsurfing…. lots of windsurfing, and photos with the new 2020 Severne gear. We had an epic crew lined up - Jaeger Stone, Phillip Koester, Iballa Moreno, Timo Mullen, Mauritz Mauch, Dieter Van Der Eken, the man himself - Ben Severne, and Thewes De Boer from Severne Europe. The forecast was looking solid and it was all lining up to be a great trip.

However, as we got a bit closer to departure, Mauritius started looking dodgy. Every 10 minutes I was checking Windguru and the colors were fading and fading. We had to make a call. Drinking spicy pineapple mojitos and playing poker with Russian tourists sounds fun, but that wasn’t the plan, the plan was simple - windsurfing was the plan.

We started looking at different spots, Fiji…. no wind, Indo…. no wind, everywhere we looked…. no wind. Then the Canaries popped up on the radar. I wasn’t overly excited about the Canaries, I had never been there, so all I could think about was trying to get decent shots in 45 knots onshore. But the forecast started looking good for a 3-day strike mission and next thing it was on….Canaries were the plan.