DISCOVERY
In 1992 a young Frenchman and two of his friends travel through the south of Madagascar. Decent wind and wave statistics drew their attention towards this remote territory and they were confident that this coastline must have hidden treasures. They spent a week in Fort Dauphin, surfing, windsurfing and eventually came in contact with an influential local family. At a mutual dinner they hear a fisherman talking about his home village and the wave that breaks in front of it: “All afternoon the winds blow off the tips of the waves that break in a nice order along a rock shelf.” The newly found contacts helped them to organize an expedition. A few days later the French travellers loaded two 4×4 jeeps with water, food, tents, other supplies and, naturally, windsurfing equipment. Slowly but surely they made their way southbound across the hostile territory and finally arrived in Lavanono where they hit jackpot! “We were all amazed and knew we found something special!” said Gilles Calvet. He remembers the maiden voyage as if it was yesterday, even though the journey is now a quarter of a century in the past. Nowadays, discoveries like that are rare. The globe has been scoured for wind and waves over the last decades and nearly every corner of it has been explored and scanned. From Kamchatka in the Russian Far East to West Africa and from Iceland to Patagonia – almost every beach, bay or break has been named, filmed, photographed, described in detail and later archived online. Gilles agrees, “The number of locations that windsurfers have left untouched is shrinking. Though, the bare will to find these is shrinking too. When I ask pro windsurfers to come on a photo trip with me, in nine out of ten times their first question concerns the intensity of the travel and the chances for having a windless day.”