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Spirit Vibrates
deep within, pushing us to extremes,
driving us forward. A desire to go
beyond what we know, into unchartered
waters, to explore the forces that
surround us and that make the earth the
watery-blue planet she is. We’re all
fascinated by the ocean blue, but for
surfers, this fascination is transformed
into an intimacy.
We hire boats to take us out there, to
see if we can sail maybe to the ends of
the earth, like Columbus, or to its very
core, where the waves are perfect. That’s
the nature of “the Crossing.”
For some, getting on a boat feels like
being trapped in a very small house for
two weeks. But for others it’s
relinquishing their power to the ocean,
like finding the freedom of flight.
Boarding the Indies Trader for my third
Quiksilver Crossing is like meting up
with an old friend; returning to the
galley like stepping into old
photographs of a favourite hangout, or
going back to that spot where I used to
go to share secrets. |
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The girls arrive, and everyone is in
anticipation of what the next 16 days
will bring. Will we get waves? Is it
going to be big? How big? Will it be
stormy? Am I going to get seasick? Just
what are we going to do the whole time?
For me it is extra special because,
except for Lisa Andersen and I, it is
the girls first time on the boat. Lisa
and I fight again over who will get the
bottom bunk, while we put the groms –
Sofia Mulanovich, 16 from Peru, and
Caroline Sarran, 15 from France, in one
cabin. Jodie Smith, 19 of Australia,
bunks with Roxy team manager Danielle
Beck, who gets stuck with al the clothes
and bathing suits; Christiana, 20 from
Newport, USA, sleeps in the wheelhouse.
With an amped renowned Australian behind
the wheel, and another behind the stove,
and three Indonesian deckhands, we’re
off, adrift somewhere in French
Polynesia with only a vague idea of
where we were headed.
This fascination with the sea, its
treasures, its memory as old as our
planet, it’s adventure, its vastness
its danger... Our pursuit of it is like
space exploration, or a journey into the
soul. I think of what it was like for
ancient canoe people. What motivated
them to venture away from their safe
tropical paradise, toward a horizon they
knew nothing about? Maybe its freedom,
or gold, or adventure. Maybe it was for
waves.
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The Indies Trader is a vessel of our
dreams. We get waves every single day,
except during our 30-hour open ocean
Crossing. There is one right in
particular that we surf for three days
straight: overhead, sometimes even
bigger, secluded. We send out two, they
come in and two more go out. We need to
surf it in pairs, mirroring one another,
because to surf it alone would be so
surreal, we might convince ourselves
that we have indeed reached the end of
the earth. Seeing Lisa carve rail to
rail on a perfect peeling left is
reality check for me. |
"There is only one wave that lets
us down. Its grinding left that probably
needs a bigger swell to be rideable, and
Lisa is convinced one of us is going to
get hurt. So we move on. She looks after
us.
The rest of our journey is filled with
waves that are just right – not too
big, not too small, a perfect fit, each
one different, but equally as good as
the last. We explore without taking,
meet without exploration, in a dream
world. May this sleep last forever. |
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