Home / About Jeroen
The founder
Jeroen Mutsaars
Co-founder and co-owner of Swell, a surf and watersports retreat in Cabarete, Dominican Republic, that he and his wife Clare built from bare land in 2009.
Jeroen didn’t buy a surf retreat. He built one.
Jeroen is Dutch. In 2004 he left a conventional career in the Netherlands to build his life around surfing and travel. That wasn’t a gap year. It was the decision the rest of this story runs on.
For several years he ran 1 of the first European surf travel companies: Surferdream.com and GlobalSurfers.com , booking trips and visiting surf resorts and camps around the world. Seeing dozens of them up close taught him where the market split. The cheap camps were fun but rough. The comfortable resorts were pleasant but rarely got you actually surfing. Almost nobody was doing both well: real coaching, real comfort, one price, no fuss.
So in early 2009 he and his wife Clare stopped looking for a place to buy and decided to make their own. They bought land in Cabarete and hired an award-winning Swiss architect Silke Sadeghi to design the retreat from the ground up. Swell opened its doors that October.
Since then, over 6,000 guests have learned to surf, kitesurf and wingfoil here, most of them adults arriving with no watersports background at all. Cabarete was a deliberate choice, not a postcard one: a consistent, forgiving beach break, warm water year round, and steady wind that make it one of the best places in the Caribbean to stand up for the first time.
Today, Jeroen and Clare co-own Swell, and Haudy Retamal from Chile, runs the day-to-day operations on the ground in Cabarete. Jeroen stays close to how the place teaches and writes most of what you read on this site.
- 2009Year Jeroen and Clare opened Swell
- 15+Seasons running the retreat, on the beach
- 6,000+ Guests coached from first wave onward
- 6Watersports he rides and understands himself
How Swell came to be
A life pointed at the water
- 2004
Left a conventional career in the Netherlands to build a life around surfing and travel. Started spending real time in the water rather than reading about it.
- Before Swell
Ran a surf-travel company, sending travellers to surf resorts and camps and visiting them himself. Saw first-hand what worked, what didn’t, and the gap nobody was filling: proper coaching and proper comfort, together, at a fair price.
- 2009
Bought land in Cabarete with his wife Clare and hired an award-winning Swiss architect to design and build a retreat from scratch. Swell opened that October, purpose-built for adults learning from zero.
- Since 2009
Has hosted thousands of guests learning to surf, kitesurf and wingfoil, choosing Cabarete for its consistent waves, warm water and beginner-friendly beach break. Watched wingfoiling arrive and folded it straight into what Swell teaches.
- Today
Co-owns Swell with Clare, with Haudy running the day-to-day operations in Cabarete. Jeroen stays focused on the one thing the whole place is built around: getting a first-timer up and riding inside a single week.
What stands behind the writing
Fifteen seasons of doing it, not describing it
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He built the place, brick to booking
Swell wasn’t bought as a going concern. Jeroen and Clare designed and built it, and have owned and shaped it ever since, with Haudy running operations day to day. When he writes about surf holidays, it’s from building and owning one.
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He coaches the exact reader he writes for
Most guests are adults with no watersports background and limited holiday time. Fifteen-plus seasons of getting exactly those people standing up sits behind every “how to learn” article on this site.
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He rides everything he recommends
Surfing, wingfoiling, kitesurfing, windsurfing, prone foiling and sailing. The kit advice and the “is this for me” answers come from doing the sport, not repeating a brochure.
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He reads one beach, deeply
Over a decade watching Cabarete daily: when it’s a wave day, when the wind wins, which corner of the bay suits someone standing up for the first time. Local knowledge, measured in seasons.
“Cabarete is the ideal playground for wind and watersports!”
On the water
A waterman first, an owner second
Jeroen doesn’t just run the place. He rides everything Swell teaches and a fair bit it doesn’t. That breadth is the reason the coaching here reads conditions properly, matches guests to the right kit, and knows when the wind is the better call than the waves.
It’s also why the site’s advice is honest about trade-offs. Someone who only surfs will tell you to surf. Someone who has spent years across every discipline can tell you which one actually fits your week, your fitness and the forecast.
- Surfing
- Wingfoiling
- Kitesurfing
- Windsurfing
- Prone foiling
- Sailing
- Stand up paddle boarding
- Snowboarding, come winter
What Jeroen writes about
Fifteen seasons, written down
Find Jeroen
Same person, everywhere.
The easiest way to reach Jeroen about a week at Swell is the enquiry form. For the professional trail, he’s on LinkedIn.
Your next wave
Reading about it is the easy part.
Come and learn where Jeroen built it. Small groups, patient coaches, and a beach break that suits people standing up for the first time.
Elsewhere on the web
Watersport paradise
Tell us your dates, how many people you are thinking about coming with, and we’ll send you a custom price and availability quote; almost instantly. Hasta pronto, see you soon.