David "Mousset" Sautebin

david sautebin elleciel custom surfboards phuket thailand — photo by Saskia Koerner - 2012

Born in 1978 in Switzerland, I grew up far from the sea and its waves but water has always been my element, liquid or solid form. During holidays in France in 1986 the first wave took me on a EPS kids board. That was it and it became clear to me that I will have to surf someday. It's only when I turned 20 and that my friends offered me a Fish made by Jean Bouldoires (Bcube.ch) thats how the story begins. Then Jean showed me how to build a sandwich longboard, this one was my real first shape, a pretty thin result but super light. Thanks again Jean and Markus. That year I had a first knee operation, finished my watchmaker education and my parents offered me some money to enjoy life! Hawaii sounded good to me. I spend 3 months on Maui, where I had a great experience, surfing many different breaks. The trip last 3 more months but I had to go back to the mountains, to work, to cold weather, back to knee pain. In 1999 a VW combi gave me freedom. With it I could be in the forest without having to stand and of course it was my ticket to the Atlantic too. We made the trip many times till 2005, enjoying the coastlines from northern Brittany to southern Morocco. To travel further I also sea-hitchhiked to the Caribbean, Japan to Saipan and surfed Sri Lanka and Indonesia. After the last trip around Nias Indonesia in 2008 and before going back to Sri Lanka, I stopped in Thailand to enjoy good food and easy life for a while. Phuket was the only place where I could eventually find a little wave and most of my sailor friends gather there so I went there, not convinced at all. But there I found great people, fantastic food, smiles everywhere and a fantastic girl cross my path! So the month I planed in Thailand stretched and is still stretching until now.

I'm happy like never before!

After a while, working on boats or trying other things

I checked my "dream list" and found "building surfboards"!

Building a surfboard is probably many surfer's dream, time came for me to try it. A mini founding has been offered by my mother so I could start building a small workshop behind my little bungalow in Thailand. Many nights were spend on Swaylocks.com to put together informations about how to build this kind of surfboards and so, early 2010 Elleciel Custom Surfboards was born!

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