THE CALL
This is the second time this has happened to me. Whatever I was doing at the time was abruptly halted by Ben Severne lobbing the Mauritius card at me! ‘Whatcha doing? Wanna go to Mauritius? Carter and ‘Hoops’ are coming!’ (Hoops aka James Hooper, Severne board shaper) and Carter who needs no introduction! A real crew of Cowboys! It was a tough one to pass up, no matter how busy I was at the time (I was stacked with work!); but once the seed was planted, the thought was imbedded in my mind there was only one answer. “Sure. When we going.” Gun for hire Carter, or otherwise known as ‘The great Carzini’, is the perpetual travelling workhorse and also never says no to a trip. And if I was honest, the fact he was going was one of the reasons I couldn’t say no. Along with the fact that I hadn’t been wave sailing for way too long.
“ Ben Severne is a clever bugger, and one of the few who’s maintained the delicate blend of work and passion ”
THE WORD SPREAD
Since Polakow’s first article and Fred Gravoiles infamous ‘Trilogy tour’ visit in the late ’90s, (where localism got a little bit out of hand), Mauritius has been well and truly on the map. There’s not that many perfectly clean, consistently windy down the line surf breaks around the world! As a result, it was inevitable word was to spread about One Eye, particularly with an abundance of hotels lining the foreshore and the natural beauty of the Le Morne landscape and its incredible flat water lagoon. On arrival at the airport, I was greeted by a couple of pickups and we were whisked across the mountains, which takes about an hour. I slept the entire way (shattered from flying Thailand to Perth and then directly to Mauritius), only waking as we pulled into La Gaulette, which is a small town just before Le Morne and the larger hotel accommodations. At least I had time for a shower though. Ben flew in from China, had his flight diverted to Adelaide because of fog and only just made it in time, literally sprinting to the check-in counter in order to make the flight.