August 13 - 28 1999

EXTRACT ONE

Next morning we got up early, woke Kelly who’d arrived late the evening before, and headed back to for a surf. At first it looked smaller but Poto arrived back at the launching ramp after dropping Tom and Kelly sporting a big smile. “Couple of feet bigger!” he said. “Good!” After we’d been cruising the lineup for ten minutes or so, catching what seemed to be the good ones (it seemed about 6 foot), water suddenly began draining off the reef, and a monstrous set unveiled itself. Yeah – I know we’ve all seen photos but images just don’t compare with the real thing. A 10-footer at this place, black and hard as stone, is so radical you almost don’t even want to look at it. Pete and I were caught inside; I was lucky, my leash snapped instantly. But Pete’s didn’t, and the last wave of the set ripped the plug clean out of the bottom of his board. Poto drove around into the lagoon and he surfed without one for a while until Poto took him back to the car for his spare. We were all pretty spun by the set and kept our eyes peeled but for the rest of the day nothing bigger than 6 foot came through.

EXTRACT TWO

Manihi Salmon and his islet on the far southern rim of ----, where he lives with his wife of 18 years ad his youngest daughter, 3. If you were of a certain mind, Manihi’s lifestyle could really get to you. He’s a graceful man, around 50 years of age, speaks fluent French and English, and runs a fish trap out in the channel near the pass. Manihi had a faintly quizzical air; I felt as if he were observing us, wondering what our motives were, just as we were wondering about him. He’d painstakingly worked on his islet, digging in a channel for boats, building a house and storage and a boathouse and shoring up the ragged coral sand-rock rim with low concrete walls. A cyclone hit the atoll back in 1982, and not long ago a tsunami had bowled through, raising the water level briefly by over two meters; but the chance of a destructive weather event didn’t seem to bother Manihi too much. “That is something you can’t change,” he shrugged.

EXTRACT THREE

Kelly showed up in a good mood and ready to enjoy himself. He’s put on some weight in the past eight months, some of it muscle, some just male late 20’s bulk. Kelly seemed a little disassociated from the surfing world, perhaps enjoying the chance not to live and breathe his sport for a chance. He brought four boards, most of which were damaged in transit, including really nice looking 6’9” x 16” tow board, which despite its extra tough glassjob had two bad creases in the nose. Kelly had recently bought a Macintosh G3 PowerBook computer, and with typically curious zeal took every opportunity to whip it out and indulge in his passion for music, and even better, movies. The PowerBook was fitted with a DVD drive, and Kelly had several movie disks, including ‘Happy Gilmore’ and ‘American History X’, the painful movie about white-power racism in Venice Beach. Kelly watched his movies with great interest and could quote from them at length, which made me wonder if he was practicing – he was, after all, due to leave the boat early in order to take a bit part in a big budget movie starring Matt Dillon and Michael Douglas. He described the plot, which sounded a lot like ‘There’s Something About Mary’. Kelly could just bail from surfing, it suddenly flashed: just take off for Hollywood or wherever and never come back... how weird would that be?