Trip 3
March 26 1999

My name is Paul Robertson and I'm a cook on the boat and have been on the boat from Cairns to Polynesia. I am 27 and am from the Sunshine Coast, QLD.

The Quiksilver Crossing is all of my dreams realised. Besides cooking on the boat, I look after the boys. Getting them up early for surfs, keeping watch at night, if we are steaming between surf breaks, and also helping Martin navigate, are all parts of my daily routine.

Let me tell you about a typical menu on the Indies Trader:
Morning is fresh fruit salad, bread, coffee (we bake 3-4 types of bread per day) we usually keep a loaf for in between breakfast after a morning surf. The fishing has been really good and so have the fish salads. We also eat a lot of chutneys. This could be our typical lunch.

We eat red meat very rarely, also due to the great fishing, about once a month and when we do we have a selection of vegetables to go with it. Just in terms of provisioning the boat we visit the local markets for fresh fruit and vegetables for about 2 weeks we store it in a cool room in the boat - we have some frozen meats and fish for fresh fish. We can leave port and be at sea for a month comfortably with the amount of water and food that we stock up with.

When we arrived in Polynesia the mountains were breath taking with waterfalls, four or five reef breaks with lefts and rights just going in every direction. It was a special feeling.

Later in the journey, we came across some locals who had lost their outboard motor and Martin came to ask me if I could help by going diving and recover the motor. We found it and fixed it and they drove away with the motor thinking it was an act of God. The locals had actually been praying for 2-3 months to send somebody to help get the motor back, and they drove away with it. It didn't turn over straight away because it had been underwater for about 2 months. Martin sprayed WD40 through it and pumped a bit of fuel through the carburetor and they couldn't believe it.

In that time we have seen about 30 A grade surfing locations, and many other potential locations, in some ways we were unlucky due to swell so it was a bit hard to tell. There was a special feeling to know that the majority of these places have probably never been looked at let alone surfed. We were talking to locals in one area and they had never seen surfboards or surfers, just to see them pick up a surfboard and touch and feel it and check it out was amazing. The local people were just amazed with surfing and thought we were completely crazy, especially to go surfing on the edge of the reef because we would get eaten by sharks or cut by the reef. They came out on canoes after we surfed the break and we helped them get momentum by steering their canoe toward the waves. I'd say we left them with some great memories.

I'm lucky being the cook, I actually get to have a bit of a surf myself. In my spare time I really enjoy diving. Coming through the Blue arm Canal was a special feeling because there are so many shipwrecks there that the diving was just fantastic. We picked up World War 2 memorabilia such as helmets, guns and bullets. I really love diving and it used to be a big part of my life doing some commercial diving with Martin, but to go out into paradise with lots of big fish and sharks is just unreal - better than welding!