If You Were Offered 2 Months On A Mentawai Charter Boat, Would You Take It?

Henry David Thoreau once wrote: “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

Last year, Diego Cordeiro set out to chase points and see how many times someone could scribble his name onto a heat draw at the Krui and Nias QS events, respectively.

Knowing that an iron is best struck when hot, his Indo sojourn also included a post-comp stay at Macaronis Resort with his father.

The stocky goofyfooter’s surfing at the left made quite the impression on the owners of a local charter. Out of the blue, “they asked me to be a guide on their boat for the rest of the season,” he told Stab. Speaking four languages fluently — Italian, English, Portuguese, and Spanish — didn’t hurt his case either. Naturally, he accepted their offer.

Diego, who currently lives in Coolangatta, was born in Brazil in 2001 to an Italian mother and a Brazilian father. At age two, he moved to California, where he stayed until nine, returned to Brazil, and then, at thirteen, relocated to Australia with his parents.

His life now splits neatly between working at Surfboard Empire in Tweed Heads (who also support him), representing Italy on the Australia/Oceania QS, and moonlighting as a surf guide. “I’m gonna do another season this year, on a charter boat called Wave Hunter,” he said.

With plenty of time and few distractions beyond surfing, Diego began stacking clips on the job — mostly in the Mentawais and Nias, though other prime locations across Indonesia’s 17,508 islands also appear in Hidden Bliss, the resulting 16-minute edit.

The video is a collaboration between Diego and Mateus Prior (aka @stevenojobs__). As tends to be the case when traveling the archipelago, plans — no matter how carefully or carelessly made — can go pear-shaped fast. Or, in this case, wildly exceed expectations.

After the Krui event, they’d booked flights to Nias, which ended up being canceled. “The only ones available to rebook were one or two days earlier than we’d planned,” Diego said. “We had no option, so we booked those. And the day we got there, the wind turned offshore, and we ended up scoring the best day of surfing of my life.” Worth noting: most of the QS pack was still stranded at Krui. “There weren’t many people out either.”

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A post shared by Diego Cordeiro (@_diegocordeiro_)

More good fortune came their way at Macaronis. “We got kicked out of the lineup in the morning because of the two-boats-max rule.” With no better option, they motored down to HT’s. The wind didn’t look promising, but when they got there, it was. They scored again. No other boats around.

Diego is currently back in the Mentawais and will be taking a brief break from his guiding gig to compete at both Indonesian QS events this season, before resuming duties for the remainder of the year. While he may not have found competitive success in 2024, those particular sessions at Nias and HT’s might’ve been the best trophy of all — backed up by pretty convincing visual evidence.