Freshly linked with its Polynesian tatts, the Indies Trader motored away from Australia back in ’99 for a 12-month mission: take great surfers to find new waves, explore the local cultures and contribute to the environment.
 

It was a bloody big undertaking, this Quiksilver Crossing thing, and no-one involved at the time had any idea how much bigger it was going to get.
 

Along with the grand ideals and lofty ambitions, the feeling among the mob at the official launch was the same at the start of any surf trip. Like you and your mates loading up the station wagon – where are we going first? What’ll we find out there? How many good waves are we gonna get! "
 

With this frame of mind, the Crossing kept sailing, beyond that first year, and the next, and the next…

MAIDEN VOYAGES
 

“For days we motored through purple water heading north, right up on the equator passing schools of pilot whales, boils of tuna, all sorts of stuff, in water that made Fiji look washed out. On the third or fourth day we saw this little white on the horizon. As the day progressed the white dot turned into a white line with a brown dot underneath it, which turned into a bigger brown line, which turned into an island chain.
 

By mid afternoon we were steaming into this bay, grass huts down to the waterline, loin-clothed natives, grass skirts, people getting into their canoes paddling towards us just screaming.

We experienced the feeling the first Europeans who travelled to Tahiti must have felt. Whilst that was going on Martin pointed across to a nearby island and said ‘that looks like the back of a perfect wave over there’.” Bruce Raymond

One of the things everyone who’s been on The Crossing has in common is a good memory. Surfers who’ve been on dozens of boat trips remember their experiences on the Indies Trader clear as yesterday, even the very first trips.

But you would, wouldn’t you? Like Quiksilver honcho Bruce Raymond talking about his first trip on the boat, surfing that perfect reef with canoes full of stoked locals screaming at every wave, you catch this hint of incredulousness in the voices of the participants, still spinning out that it’s all gone down, and still is.

OUT OF AFRICA
 

Ryan Hipwood was another stoked grom on his first boat trip, which happened to be with Danny Wills, Craig Warton and Masatoshi Ohno, and also happened to be somewhere near West Africa, at a wave Hippo describes as “like Burleigh, but a hundred times longer”.
 

“It was like rocking up to Mars or something” Hippo reckons. “We flew from Brisbane to Singapore, then to London, which was cool cos it was snowing at the airport, but the next time we land it’s totally the opposite; we’re in the middle of nowhere.
 

Someone at Quik got in touch with a windsurfer from Maui who lived over in Africa and said the waves were epic, that they got as much swell as Hawaii. We didn’t know what to expect though, no-one had been on a surf trip there before, and we didn’t score at all until the last two days. We just had to entertain ourselves and I was losing it after awhile from boredom, just playing dice and acey ducey, but those two days…you couldn’t have asked for funner waves”…Ryan Hipwood
 

THE CURSE OF KELLY SLATER
 

“We were in the Caribbean area, hadn’t really been doing that well and had everyone tearing us in different directions about what we should do”, says captain Martin Daly. “We were in the wrong spot and Kelly was getting bored with it.

I got the charts out, and even though there was an active surf community where we were, I just couldn’t see it. I found a reef on the map that had good exposure from the tradewinds and it looked perfect, like G-land the other way around, and it was probably about a day or two away. Kelly was about to bail so I completely made up this story to keep him on the boat. I asked him if he’d ever heard of the curse of Kelly Slater. He had no idea what I was talking about, so I told him that every time he leaves after running out of patience, the surf gets good.

I kinda had the hook in, you know, he was starting to look interested. I showed him the place on the charts, told him the blokes in the area had been really tight-lipped, but now they knew we were definitely going they opened up a bit and told us about this place “Racetrack Rights”.

I told him it’d be really rough getting over there and the weather would be bad, but that this wave was going to be worth it. All the while I’ve got no idea what it’s really like except from what I can gather from the charts, and I’m sure no-one’s ever surfed it, but Kelly just said ‘Bugger it, I’m coming’. The weather wasn’t as bad as we’d expected, a bit sloppy, but Kelly was in good spirits. We saw a small point break and were getting excited, and when we got to the place on the map, I looked through my binoculars, and it looked exactly like I’d bullshitted about. None of the locals had ever even surfed it, but it was perfect. I don’t think I’ve even ever told Kelly I was bullshitting!” Martin Daly
 

OUTSIDE THE BOUNDARIES
 

Back in June, 2001 Kelly Slater was off the tour and in a reclusive semi-retirement. Somehow, he was coerced aboard the Quiksilver Crossing with mates Tom Carroll, Ross Clarke-Jones, Peter Mel, Dave Kalama and a couple of high-powered jet-skis.

Hopes were high for some kind of big wave, tow-in madness, but for most of the trip the waves hovered in a hardly life-threatening three to six feet. The groms – Ry Craike and Dylan Graves – were all over it. But it was what those frustrated big-wave he-men did with all that pent up testosterone and a couple of grunty jetskis that really made this trip interesting.

Kalama, also an accomplished windsurfer, teamed up with Kelly for a couple of tow sessions with foot straps in small surf and very nearly invented a whole new sport. It was probably these sessions, and the resulting photos and footage, that spawned the whole “tow-at”, small-wave, jet-ski craze.

Kalama was already well-versed in the art of the aerial loop in windsurfing and with the aid of the ski and the straps, this became Kelly’s mission for the trip, to pull off a full 360-degree rotation.
He came close numerous times, with and without the aid of ski and straps, usually landing on the back of the wave because he’d been airborne so long. He eventually tweaked his ankle in the attempt and had to sit out a couple of days, before finally nailing the freaky move late in the trip. Serious swell eventually arrived at an almost unsurfed lefthand reef and the crew feasted in a marathon session of top to bottom barrels. This trip, the remote location, the adrenalised crew, and the challenge of a whole new approach to surfing seemed to be something of a turning point for the K-man. Soon, he was back on tour, duking it out with a new generation – Al, Parko, Mick and the Hobgoods, winning events, and eyeing that seventh world title. The time out from the tour had obviously been the key in making any sort of a comeback even possible.

“The life on tour is pretty exciting. There’s always a lot of stuff happening and it’s really easy to get caught up in thinking that’s what life’s about,” Kelly observed towards the end of the trip. “Sometimes I feel like I’m missing out a bit on pushing myself. But then, I’m probably more healthy, physically and emotionally, and at this point in my life that’s more important”. Tim Baker

MCGRODER’S BIG GASH
 

“We’d been at this perfect, perfect right for three days. Not a drop of water out of place – just perfect, but with this heavy, heavy inside section”, says Elko. “The swell had been 3-4 foot and it came up on the last day, six feet and getting bigger, and the wave was still doing its thing, just absolutely amazing.”

The captain, John McGroder, was trying to out surf the boys, and at one point I actually said, ‘Listen mate, you’ve got seven people on board, you should take it a bit easier’.
 

Jake Patto and I had come in and we’re having breakfast watching McGroder out with the cook, and we’re watching it getting bigger. We saw him take off on a bigger one, probably the biggest wave we’ve seen so far and I just went ‘Whoah, this is gnarly.’ I go off to get my helmet, which I hadn’t worn all trip, and as I’m getting it I heard Jake screaming at John, deep in the tube and on the foamball, where you just shouldn’t be. He gets pitched, his leg gets caught in a hole in the reef up to the knee, and by the time a wave passes over him we could see blood everywhere, and we’re fifty yards away on the boat. I jumped on the jetski and got him and he looked like he’d been attacked by a Bengal tiger.

Once he’s on board, no-one wants to deal with it. It looked like we’d caught 100 tuna there was so much blood. I bandaged him up and there was a little fishing boat beside us, and the guy told us there was a hospital on the other side of the islands.

He put John on the boat and I followed him on the jetski to this island, then put John on my back to get him the quarter mile to the hospital. The doctor took off the bandages and thought he’d been attacked by a shark. He pulls out this one needle that’s probably been used on everyone who’s come through and I just said no way, put the bandages back on and piggybacked him back. The whole time John was conscious and wigging out.

We get everything on the Trader and set sail for a bigger hospital, with me probably the only person on the boat who could drive it. I’ve got all the maps, navigating for six hours with John bleeding from the arteries, and I remember saying to him ‘you fucking idiot!’ He’s in massive pain, there’s still blood coming out of the bandages, but we get to this other island six hours later.

KEEPING ‘EM OUT OF TROUBLE

 

“The vibe on a boat, it’s the perfect atmosphere for a reality show”, grins chef Mick Wilcomes. “You’ve got six surfers in the middle of the ocean, everyone seasick, and if someone’s having an off day it affects everyone really fast.”

A powerful natural-footer whose cooking has stopped more than a few flat spells on The Crossing turning mutinous, Mick’s had to deal with more than the odd boredom-crazed grom.

“If we’re in a new place we’ll always mount a mission on land, especially when we’ve got kids on board and they’ve never been outside their comfort zones. I’ll drag the grommets off to the markets or something to see people slaying live cattle in the street.”

Although most younger crew on The Crossing don’t have time to get attached to the DVD player, Mick’s seen his share of bizarre 21st century grom behaviour. “There was a trip on Indies Trader 2 with groms from all over the world. We were parked at Macaronis and they were watching a movie of Bruce Irons at Macaronis. I looked out the window of the boat and Macaronis was better than it was in the video they were watching at Macaronis,” he shakes his head. “Mostly they’ll be told to get the fuck out of the boat sharpish if they’re sitting around watching videos, but that was like the Twilight Zone.” Mick Wilcomes

THERE ARE NO SHARKS IN CANADA
 

“That’s all we heard from the locals, and that’s what we kept telling ourselves as we huddled together on the reef, like you do in cold water. It smelt of fish and was a bizarre vibe.” So says Australia’s greatest surfing ambassador, Tom Carroll, on his first surf in Canadian waters.
As tuna fleets made their way to shore, their decks laden with 100-250kg tuna, each the size of a small European hatchback; there was one shape that hung over the deck of one of the trawlers. A Cadillac, a 20’ Great White, caught on the next reef out from where TC, Peter Mel and Martin Daly had parked their giant seaplane.

“We bloody knew it!” Tom laughs, “There were seals everywhere, and wherever there’s seals there’s something that eats seals. It freaked the hell out of us, but the waves were enough to keep us in the water.”
That wasn’t the first time we had freaked a bit that day, Tom says about the first recorded surf trip in a Grumman Albatross Sea Plane. “They can land in 8’ of groundswell, so the pilot had to time the sets on his approach, but when he landed, we landed in the gaps in the swell, sure, but we ended up pulling up right on top of the reef and we had to quickly get the hell out of there before any sets came in.”

It was the culmination of one of the most hardcore surf trips undertaken. A trip that involved meeting up with the seaplane in the Huckleberry Finn/moonshine country of the Mississippi River, a refuel in motor-city Detroit in the US mid-west, then flying up to a tuna-fishing backwater on the Canadian East Coast.

“It’s a beautiful, sturdy old plane and on the bottom, because it has to act like a boat as well as a plane – this is unbelievable – it has a double-concave stinger bottom.”

“We woke up and we weren’t sure what was happening, where we were. But the Canadian locals there were great, hardcore surfers who proudly wear the cold around their neck like a medal. Fantastic people, and a completely different surfing experience to any other trip I’ve been on.”

As TC, Martin and Peter cruised over pine-treed lochs, grizzly bear country: “There were reefs and pointbreaks opening up in front of us around every headland, we felt so stoked and fortunate. By far the best way anyone’s been able to check the surf before”.

They ended up landing at a snappy little right, named Lance’s Right after their ginger-ale-loving guide Lance, who ran the local surfshop in Halifax.

“The Grumman Albatross is another extension of the Crossing, and there’s still that same stoke you get when you’re a kid, loading up the car, wide-eyed, looking for waves with ya mates. Except it’s in a big, old antique Indiana Jones plane and you’re opening the door and hanging out like it’s an old school bus. Can’t wait to get up in that thing again”. Tom Carroll

EUROPE WITH ELKO
 

In the middle of a European jaunt that saw the Indies Trader slip under the London Bridge and into Amsterdam, Gary Elkerton and the crew managed to shirt front the storm which caused the massive Bay of Biscay oil spill and the legendary Valhara swell.
 

“The Indies is not designed for the Atlantic Ocean, it’s for hiding behind islands,” Elko says.

“We’re heading into a 20-foot swell, no-one can sleep and I’m up with the captain just loving it. I love those sort of conditions. Suddenly all the engines overheat. The captain stops the engine and gets me to take the wheel. I grew up on a boat with my dad so I felt like I knew what I was doing, but the boat’s got a flat bottom and every time we got hit by a wave it felt like it was going to roll. He gets under the boat, open ocean swells, wind howling, the boat’s rolling, he dives under it, comes back up and it’s a bloody plastic bag clogging the hose. Jock, the captain from Africa, is one of the gnarliest captains I’ve ever met besides my father. He dives with sharks, holds the world marlin spearing record, just a classic gnarly guy.

We went from London to Amsterdam on that same trip with MR on the boat. MR isn’t a fan of boats and we’re sailing against the wind, and the boat doesn’t really handle sideways shit, and it’s rolling for 12 hours like it’s going to tip. But our reward was Amsterdam,” Elko laughs.

LOCALS AND LOCALISM
 

You might expect localism to rear its ugly head when The Crossing shows up all cameras and pros blazing, but it seems most people are just keen to get on the boat and check it all out, and the best way to do that is to prove to the crew they can take them to where the action is.
As for the locals who’d never seen surfing before, Mick Wilcomes says, “Even when you meet people who don’t speak English, when they find out what you’re doing they’d always say yesterday was pumping.
It’s like ‘You’re a fisherman, you don’t know what pumping is!’ But they’re all ‘No no, big wave yesterday!”

In all his years captaining the good ship Crossing, Martin Daly can only remember one run-in with locals, caused by a cameraman trying to pick up a local girl in a country only recently emerged from civil war, without knowing she was with a bunch of ex-soldiers. “He had no idea about the people he was dealing with, he was just in a bar and thought he was in the Paradise Room on the Gold Coast. The skipper had developed a good relationship with the guys there and they told him to get this bloke out of there, ‘cos they were going to take him out the back and kill him. The locals didn’t look threatening but these guys had genuinely been involved in killing lots of people”. Martin says, “You’ve just got to be sensitive wherever you go. We’ve been back and we’re still cool with those guys and it all worked out for the best.

“We’ve really tried to tread lightly. I’m super sincere about it. After my experiences in the Mentawaiis I really understand that we don’t have any right to have a negative or positive impact on these places just because we’ve got the ability to do it”. Marty Daly

REEF CHECK:

• Number of reefs surveyed by scientists in The Crossing’s first five years: 70.

• Oceans covered: Pacific, Indian, Atlantic.

• Percentage of world’s reefs under threat: 70.

• Percentage of world’s reefs damaged beyond repair: 20.