Cyrus Sutton has done as much as anyone to propel the #Vanlife phenomenon into the stratosphere.

The surf filmmaker first moved into a van ten years ago to allow him to finish a 16mm surf documentary, travelling between Australia and Los Angeles to shoot and edit.

“It was a practical decision,” he remembers, of the failure to negotiate a living wage for the three years of the project. “This oversight had me surviving on cans of kidney beans and needing a rent-free place to sleep while I traveled between Australia and Los Angeles shooting and editing.”

In over a decade of living in and shooting out of vans, Sutton has clearly become a pro. His latest project has been upgrading a Sprinter van into his most luxurious and functional camper yet.

“My Sprinter was a dream to drive but the living quarters were a problem,” he explains on the Reef blog. “ Things were always sliding around and it was hard to keep anything organised. I started building a list of features I wanted to put into my van. As the list grew I realised that I needed to remove everything and start from scratch.”

Sutton being Sutton, he documented the build process in the sweet short doc above. Here’s hoping the new wheels provide him with as many epic surf ventures as his previous steed, the star of the surf #Vanlife magnum opus Compassing (below).

Read more about Sutton’s history of Vanlife and building his Sprinter van on the Reef blog.