Very few things bring Martin Daly to tears. The burly, outspoken captain of the Indies Trader seems as impenetrable as the steel hull of his ship. A life spent on the sea - first diving to depths of 500 feet as a salvager, and later pioneering the surf charter business - has thickened his skin. But deep below that hardened exterior beats the adventurous heart of a child whose only true home is at the helm, out where the wild things are. Ask him about his favorite explorer and his eyes light up. "Shackleton", he utters with admiration. "The book Endurance made me weep." Most people figured that the areas the Crossing explores have been tapped after four decades of exploration. Daly, on the other hand, studied his nautical charts, had a few hunches, and struck pay dirt on his first trip to the tropics. "I felt like I was in Indo on a good day, same deal," he raves of one particularly pristine setup he "stumbled" upon during his first outing. "The only difference was the lack of people and the amazingly clear water."
Daly finds so much great surf around the globe that many have deemed him: lucky". But such a label is a copout. He has dedicated his life to that pursuit and been prepared when the opportunity arises. "Get off your ass and go," he growls. "Have the conviction and patience to keep on looking when the overwhelming opinion of all those around you is that there is nothing left to explore."
Intro by Jason Borte; interview by Jim Kempton

EXPLORATIONS: What's the secret to making the whole thing work?

MARTIN DALY: Maintaining the purity of the mission and sticking to the basic three tenants as laid-out by Bruce Raymond when the project was conceived: first, to explore for surf; second, to have empathy for local customs and people; and third, to give something back to the environment that we operate in. Pretty simple. The whole concept is really straightforward. Get in a boat, depart for the unknown and find what's there.

How did you decide what route to take?
We based it on the cyclone season, trade wind directions, and the probability of swell. Forever people have headed out into the ocean in search of something. We are looking for waves. So our route takes us where we think the waves are.

Of all the places the boat has traveled to, what was the most amazing spot you visited?
It's impossible to pick one. Everywhere we go is somewhere new and foreign and we do not really know what to expect 99% of the time. For all the effort and angst we have been rewarded tenfold and it has absolutely and positively been worth it and continues to be so.

The Indies Trader has a pretty interesting background. Give us a little rundown on the boat and its history.
The boat was built in 1972 for Mr. David Barnett, a surveyor by trade, who went into the salvage business, diving on shipwrecks in Papau New Guinea and Indonesia. In 1986, I offered to buy the boat after working on it for 3 years as part of the diving crew. I went into a partnership with Frank Taylor, a wealthy adventurer, who had been a fighter pilot in Vietnam War and an aviation legend. My new passion was treasure hunting and we formed a diving/salvage company in Indonesia. After an unsuccessful operation in China, I moved more into commercial diving operations. And I started the virtually unknown reefs of the outer Indonesian islands. Eventually I swapped my stock in the treasure hunting company for Franks share in the Trader. I also registered it under a new name, the MV Indies Trader. The diving business went well. I cleared my debts by late 1990 and owned the boat free and clear, a lifetime ambition. I could now go exploring whenever I wanted.  I started surfing remote islands of Indonesia, after scoring a job salvaging a crane that had fallen off a timber barge. We spent the next few weeks exploring and surfing great waves. Back in Jakarta, I scored a one-year service contract to provide diving support for eight drilling rigs. However, there were only four berths on board and the contract specified eight, so I cut the boat in half amidships and added six feet, with the original naval architect Rick James doing all the design work. With my Indonesian partner, I also refitted a cray boat in Fremantle, Western Australia, with the idea of doing dive charters to Indonesia. I figured that I could sneak off and go surfing while the other guys were diving. Soon after a friend chartered the boat for a surf trip and the crew, unknown to me at the time, included Tom Carroll, Martin Potter and Ross Clarke-Jones. We scored epic surf.
After the rig support contract, the Indies Trader starting doing charters to the Mentawais. In 1996, the Indies Trader 2 arrived on the scene. In October 1998, and the Quiksilver Crossing project was approved, and the Indies Trader headed to the Pacific Ocean. On February 13, 1999, the vessel arrived in Cairns, Australia, for the first time in 27 years in preparation for the greatest surf adventure of all time. It set sail on the Quiksilver Crossing on Saturday March 20, 1999.

Everybody thinks the project is just one big fantasy. When people say, "This must be paradise," what do you say?
The Crossing is a huge endeavor that involves considerable logistics, planning and simple hard work, punctuated by moments of absolute bliss. If you can imagine the fantastic things that we have done and seen then that is all true. We have seen paradise and we have done and discovered perfect waves and we have met beautiful people. We have also been incredibly challenged, had moments of fear, doubt and anguish. The project is also about reality. We have traveled more than 77,000 miles around the planet on a little single-engine motorboat without breaking down, being rescued or having a major injury or catastrophe. So we feel lucky.

If you had to do it over, is there one thing you would change?
I would never try to impose a schedule on the elements and would bring my wife and children with me on the boat and raise my kids at sea.

You are traveling next up the Eastern Seaboard and into the Great Lakes. From there you'll be heading down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Where do you see the Crossing going after that?