Gaping tubes versus and gaping wounds. Patto versus Elko. Pleasure versus pain as the Quiksilver Crossing drops anchor near a shallow righthand reef pass that's exactly somewhere between Sydney, Los Angeles, Santiago, Tokyo and Fairbanks, Alaska. We don't even know where it is, and maybe we don't wanna know. Just look at what it did to the Captain's foot! But then look at how blue and perfect Jake's tube is! What do we know? Surfing is one excellent adventure and one thing taking a boat across the massive Pacific proves is - there's plenty of waves and adventures still left in this world for all of us.

It was pretty ugly, pretty scary and it happened on the last day of the trip. Elko takes up the story - "Me and Jake had been out all morning, just getting pitted off our heads, and then we went back to the boat to have some breakfast, so the Captain and the Cook went out. He took off on this six-foot wave and when it got to the inside, the thing was absolutely grinding, and I've gone to Jake, 'Oh, I'm gonna get my helmet'. That was the hugest wave I'd seen on the whole trip. So I'm walking off down the side of the boat to get my helmet, and I'm still lookin' at the Captain haulin' through this absolute beauty, then the foamball caught him, and I've just gone 'Holy Shit!' you know, it looked like a heavy wipeout. So I've bent down to get my helmet and I heard him come up screaming".

Elko did a bit of time on his old man's trawler as a kid, so he knew enough to get a big boat moving, "...and as we're leaving the pass, I said to the Captain 'You fucken idiot, I told you not to go too deep', and the poor guy's layin' there bleedin to death."

They have to head to the nearest capable doctor, who's four hours away, so Elko and Patto take turns steering the boat and trying to navigate and avoid running aground. To pass the time they have a chook lotto, betting on the amount of stitches it'll take to sew the Captain up. They eventually find the doctor, Elko goes the hellman piggyback thing again, and they stitch John up, he spend the night there, the next day he gets evacuated to the nearest slice of civilisation and then a plane back to Australia, where he spends a week in hospital pumped full of antibiotics. Oh, and the bet winner? Elko with 64 stitches.

Jake's a brilliant surfer, and I've been watching his surfing closely for the last couple of years. He's got so much talent and, being a WA boy, he's so cool in heavy waves - very stable and secure. He was really charging on that trip, getting foamballing tubes, and doin' all the moves. I'm 35, so I was just trying to keep up with him, and it was really exciting for me. Jake is so amped, so full of energy - he was frothing the whole time on the boat. A great guy and a great fisherman. -Elko

The fish? Ten kilo Yellow Fin Tuna on 12 kilo line with the good old Rapala lure. Elko got a huge Wahoo it must have been about at least 20 kg and that was on the same gear, it took about an hour to get it in, but that was on a special lure - the good old onion bag. If you've ever made your own lure before you know that the good old red onion bag never fails. - Jake The right was absolutely cookin' off its head. It was one of the best reef passes I've ever been to. I've got it photographed in my brain at the moment, I can't get it out of my head. You could only surf the wave on the outgoing tide, they'd be really hard to paddle into, but you just had to go. On the incoming tide you couldn't surf it cause you get a wave and you cannot paddle back out. So for a couple of days we pulled the jetski out and that made it soooo easy. Bill Alexander and little Walters were both going 'Fuck the jetskis', but by the end of the day, everyone wanted to get on the end of the jet. We were just getting so many waves with it. In an hour I caught about 50 waves. And towing in you could get so much deeper. - Elko The right was so much fun. We arrived one day and it was small but still fun and after that it just got better and better day by day, we had to stay longer because we just simply couldn't leave. Some of the barrels were so hollow I was comparing them to backdoor, very shallow but. It wasn't that good for performance really because of how shallow it was, if you fell off when it was low tide you were history, even on the high tide it was still dangerous so we were taking it pretty easy with most of us having to go straight to Hawaii from there and didn't want to come a cropper. - Jake.

The Wahoo that Elko got, I actually hooked the fish and was nice enough to hand the rod to him because I had already caught a yellow fin tuna. God I'm a nice bloke, just ask me. - Jake It's probably a trip that'll never leave my mind. It wasn't the whole trip, but there was just so much perfection at the end. To just go and find waves that haven't been surfed much before in such a perfect location is just phenomenal. For us as surfers to have the opportunity to do that, it's just mind boggling.The best thing the Crossing's got going for it is that none of the spots will be named, so the locals were stoked to have us there, some of them even came on the boat and hung with us. They were stoked on Jake's surfing, they just loved watching him surf. - Elko

The captain's Call On the seventh day there was surf. There were also locals and there was magic. A perfect right and a perfect left. Sections of the right broke over some shallow coral reef. The water was clear as the sky. The locals had grown up here and learnt to surf at this spot. They were welcoming and full of smiles. They had heard about the Quiksilver boat and asked us not to name this spot. If anyone who was there over those three epic days ever mentions it they doom this beautiful place.

The magic was the local boys surfing out of untouched stoke. They would stay out till dark, cheering and hooting and laughing. Then they would pile into one dinghy and sing all the way home. They shook each of our hands, offered us food, and invited us to their homes. They surfed boards with huge chunks bitten out by the coral. Some had scars on their hides. They sat on the Indies Trader and watched between sessions, and when the tide turned they went home to rest.

Capt. John McGroder.