Michiel Bouwmeester

Steve Chismar

· 28.07.2005

Michiel Bouwmeester

The end of an era: in the surfing scene on Lake Garda, he was as popular as he was hated. Hardly anyone could sell themselves and their ideas as well as the Dutchman Michi Bouwmeester. His training ideas were grandiose, his surf centre on the shores of Lake Garda the prototype of a modern surf centre, a windsurfing dream factory, an institution. Michi Bouwmeester's pro centre is now closed. All that remains for him is to look back - a bitter-sweet endeavour. (4/2005)

Michiel Bouwmeester

For some, he is a money-hungry, arrogant sack of shit who is right to no longer be on the pier. For others, Lake Garda and the windsurfing industry are losing a likeable, innovative man of the moment. The name Michi Bouwmeester polarises! After a five-year war of nerves with the hotel owner Montagnoli, on whose property Bouwmeester's surf centre also stood, not a footstrap screw of the MB Pro Centre remains. Michi's flagship school is now a thing of the past, making surfing history. He himself involuntarily became a legend - the creator, the fighter, the fox who faced an overpowering pack of bloodhounds and defiantly suspected that snarling no longer counted.

From his house on the Strada Vecchia in Nago, the view ironically sweeps across the whole of Lake Garda directly to the western Gardesana and the Hotel Pier. The Dutchman from Voorhout will be 50 years old in 2005. He has spent exactly half of his life running this famous funboard school, which he is currently looking down on through the clear January air. He skilfully hides his emotions behind his cheerful, almost affected facial expressions, the sonny-boy demeanour familiar to insiders, the lion-strong high-five roar, the façade that is now threatening to crumble and gradually expose the sensitive man Bouwmi. I try to capture this image with my camera: The striking, tanned face, the grey streaked blond hair and the piercing blue eyes with a view of the lake. Suddenly he grabs the camera out of my hand - not maliciously - and purposefully cleans the fine dust particles off the lens: "You have to clean that shit off, otherwise it won't work." The roles are clearly assigned here: He is the regent and there are no half measures with him - a perfectionist down to the last fingertips of his surfer hands.

His former friend Mikel Slijk, 1984 world and European freestyle champion, station manager at the pier for years, surf tester and later headmaster at the Conca d'Oro, experienced him as a fellow racer: "Michi was a good racer, knew all the tricks and protested often and successfully." Bouwmeester himself admits 30 years later: "I was too dogged and not always friendly. That was perhaps a mistake." But his motivation got him a ticket to the World Windsurfing Championships in the Bahamas - where legends such as Robby Naish, Mike Waltze and Matt Schweitzer competed. In 1979, he also finished third on the podium at the World Windsurfing Championships, got a contract with HiFly for the open class and won 111 more regattas on the HiFly. At the same time, he set up his own surf school in Toscolano, on the south-west shore of the Lagoon. The then eleven-year-old Victor Westenberg, later station manager for Bouwmeester in Cabarete, on the pier, surf tester and station owner in Dahab, became his first surf instructor.

I marvel at Michi's tastefully furnished flat in Nago. The fusilli is simmering in the kitchen. Viviana Vincenzi, his wife from Verona, smiles at me and asks: "Pasta ti va bene?" Her three-year-old son Mathew blinks shyly from behind her apron. "Si," I reply absently, because I'm more interested in the handmade wooden surfboards embedded in the wall than bookshelves. You can tell: a surfing enthusiast lives here. Photo albums are piled up next to the wedding photo from Hawaii. Then my gaze wanders further down and lingers on a curious, framed illustration: A dog shits a light bulb. The astonishment must be written all over my face, because Michi reveals the secret behind the light bulb shitter without further ado: "I've probably had this picture for 30 years. It's my philosophy of life: shit ideas!"

One of his windsurfing instructors, Ulli Gutweniger, now a doctor of psychology, describes the Dutchman as an anankastic personality type. "Michi is a performance-orientated guy for whom control and power play an important role. He is very creative and always has new ideas. In that sense, he is a person with high potential, a little genius." Bouwmeester's most ingenious idea came to him during a regatta in 1978, when he switched to the so-called tiki board at a buoy. It was a semi-custom with a flat underwater hull that was supposed to help him win on the beam.

"So, how fourth did you get?" I ask curiously. He waves his hand away irritably with a long gesture because I'm not following his train of thought. "The fin is broken. But the result wasn't important to me, it was the idea: a flat underwater hull, gliding, footstraps - that was the future, even in training. That was the impetus for me to look for a wind-safe training location and teach there like no other." As a regatta surfer, he was familiar with Lake Garda and knew that the best wind blows at the nozzle on the north-west shore next to the Hotel Pier. "The hotel was almost bankrupt and I agreed a contract with hotelier Montagnoli, planted a tin hut on the pebble beach with Pat Love sails and HiFly boards for training in 1981." The revolution, however, was the idea of retaining customers at the surf school through a well thought-out sliding scale. "If someone books a course, they will also hire a board. But if he only rents a board, that doesn't mean he's also booking a course. Lessons make customers." He invented the staggered beginner and advanced courses (A, F and S courses) and marketed them uniquely. Surf instruction was given a professional framework far beyond the beginner stage, and that was a novum exotikum. "You have to recognise his achievement without envy," admits even his fiercest competition, managing director Luca Spagnolli from the Segnana surf school empire on the lake.

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