Surfing's
cross-cultural exchange reaches new and
surreal heights as Kelly Slater, Tom
Carroll and crew climb aboard the
Quiksilver Crossing for a thoroughly
modern surf mission...
STARRING:
Kelly Slater. Six time world surfing
champion, out to master the aerial flip
and escape the demands of fame out in
this surfing wilderness.
Tom Carroll. The two time world
champ. 39, eight weeks after knee
surgery, keen to show the young blokes a
thing or two.
Ross Clarke-Jones. Fresh from his
historic win in the Eddie, with a new
lease on life in tow surfing, and a
taste for sicko devil movies.
Peter Mel. Mavericks charger and
Cortes Bank super-hero, a big, friendly
bear of a man from Santa Cruz, keen for
some tropical juice.
Dave Kalama. Jaws pioneer,
long-board master, wind-surfer, strapped
in aerialist, all round waterman and
fiend on a jetski.
Ry Craike. Hot West Oz ripper,
brought up on heavy lefts and WA's outer
reefs and islands, Air Show hot shot, at
home in the tube or in the air.
Dylan Graves. Puerto Rico's
hottest export since Ricky Martin and
Miss Universe, the little big man living
every grom's dream.
Indies Trader skipper Martin Daly
recently went for a surf by seaplane.
Left home in Jakarta, flew to Panaiatan
Island, West Java, surfed overhead one
palm point with two other guys for a
couple of hours, and was back home in
time for lunch. |
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"I was sitting in the pub and my
boardies were still wet," Martin
laughs, as if he can't quite believe the
absurdity of it. The kind of mission
that once required weeks of preparation
and planning by boat - now a quick dip
in your lunch break. This kind of thing
is Martin's gig these days as one of the
masterminds, along with Quiksilver
International Managing Director Bruce
Raymond, of the Quiksilver Crossing -
pulling off the most audacious surf
missions at the drop of a hat like a kid
playing with his battleships in the
bath.
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Ten years ago, Martin was a salvage
diver who just happened to stumble upon
some of the greatest, undiscovered surf
spots in the world in his travels
through South-East Asia. Today, he
commands a fleet of three of the
plushest, best equipped surf charter
boats in the business - Indies Traders
I, II and III - and commands princely
sums from a well-heeled clientele of
surf stars, surf industry heavyweights
and independently wealthy old surf dogs
and trust-fund kids. But this latest
venture was something else all together.
Two boats (Indies Traders I and II),
seven surfers, two jet skis, five camera
men, an internet technician and…me. I
found out I was going two days before I
flew out, on an expedition billed as
'Kelly Slater Outside the
Boundaries", which sounded to me
oddly like something you got in trouble
for at school, when you nicked off at
lunchtime to smoke ciggies. And so,
there I was winging my way to some
Indian Ocean outpost before I'd even had
time to consider what kind of surf
mission required the presence of Kelly
Slater, Tom Carroll, and big-wave
nutters Ross Clarke-Jones, Peter Mel and
Dave Kalama. A couple of hot Groms - Ry
Craike, from WA and Dylan Graves, from
Puerto Rico, were chucked in at the last
minute to round out the mix. The main
talking point enroute to the harbour
seemed to be the recent trip of mighty
legends Darrick Doerner, Gerry Lopez and
Al Byrne, who had scored 15 feet top to
bottom barreling rights in this
vicinity. Towed in by jet-ski, Martin
reckoned there was no way out of things
until you popped out of the barrel a
couple of hundred meters down the reef.
Lopez scored on such hair-raising tube
on his backhand and paddled back out to
the boat, grateful to still be alive.
Doerner, or Double D as his mates call
him, was moved to tears as the sheer
intensity of the experience, recounting
it later. While the others had gone home
to wives and families and jobs and
normal lives, Darrick couldn't quite
bring himself to go and had set up camp
on the Indies Trader III as a kind of
volunteer life-guard for Martin's well
to do clientele. DD is nothing if not
intense. We met up with him and the
outgoing crew from the last Crossing
trip - Jake and Paul Paterson, Mick
Campbell and Renan Rocha - at a tiny
toilet block of an airport, the kind of
place where they buzz the airstrip once
before landing to scare off the cows and
goats. Darrick fixed me with that icy,
piercing stare of his that gives you the
unsettling feeling that he is either
very pleased to see you, or you are in a
great deal of trouble. "Tell Kalama
and those guys I've got strong
thumbs," he declared mysteriously,
tweaking one of my nipples playfully. I
figured this must be some kind of
big-wave guy code, and tried to nod
knowingly. Surfers and cameramen had
been similarly flown in at a few days
notice to take part in the great
Slater-fest - a rare opportunity to view
the six-time world champ in action, like
a sighting of a rare exotic bid. Kelly
arrived at this dusty port riding on the
roof of this dilapidated old mini-bus,
with his board bags and a couple of
locals, like any other carefree third
world traveler. It was an image that
seemed to speak volumes about his
current frame of mind - to climb out of
the suffocating confines of his usual
space, to feel the wind in his hair, to
travel as a simple man, stripped bare.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into it...
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An armed troop of soldiers turned up at
the dock to watch over our departure,
fresh faced boy's really, in crisp
uniforms with high powered rifles slung
over their shoulders as flippantly as
school bags. We loaded up and buggered
the hell off. With a swell already
hitting, we had a nights motoring before
we reached surf. Our cook, Mick, reckons
he'd never seen the little point in town
break before. There had to be waves out
there.
The skipper of the Indies Trader II was
Jody Perry, who came third in the very
first pro junior back in '77, which was
won by Tom Carroll, and here they were
re-united in rather different
circumstances. Jody still rips and has
built his life around boats, the sea and
surfing perfect waves well off the
beaten track. You wonder if, with a few
twists of fate, their roles might have
been reversed and Jody might have been
the surf star and Tom the salty sea-dog
skipper.
First stop was a six-to-eight-foot
Sunset-like right hander that looked
kind of weird, with big rearing peaks
outside, lumpy fat sections in the
middle, but some screaming barrels on
the inside. There was a crude little
camp on land, but no one surfing and our
boy's were soon into it.
Tom's amazing, nearly 40, had
arthroscopic knee surgery eight weeks
ago, and he's squeaking under lips and
pulling into gaping barrels like it is a
Sunday set in the mid '80's and there's
a world title on the line. Kelly stood
tall and proud in the biggest, cleanest
barrel rides of the day. Ross, of
course, is right at home in this sort of
stuff, as is big Peter Mel, free-falling
out of lips and gouging faces like it's
a playful beach break. Dave Kalama took
out his long-board and stroked into big
swells way outside and backdoored the
peak. The groms had a good dig too.
Dylan is 15, from Puerto Rico, the
current NSSA East Coast Explorer boys
champ, and looks about ten. The waves
were four times overhead and he was on a
5'7" doing grabrail cutties.
"I think I need bigger fins or
something," he suggested afterwards
- "something" being perhaps an
extra foot or two of surfboard and 40
kilos more body weight. He'd found out
he was coming two days before the trip,
when he was in California for a comp,
and his mum Fed-Exed his boards to him.
Ry Craike's a charger - 16, from
Kalbarri, who started life as a natural
footer until his dad told him he should
be a goofy, so he could surf the famed
local left-hand reef on his forehand,
and he's never looked back. Dad's an
abalone diver and drags him out to WA's
offshore reefs and islands at every
opportunity, towing him into serious
open-ocean waves behind a jet ski.
Nothing seemed to phase him. |
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There were a bunch of Pommies on land, a
few Spaniards, and the inevitable
Aussies, all paying 50 cents a night for
their simple beach front cabins, and
anywhere from $2 to 6$ a day for three
meals. It took days to get here overland
- by bus, public ferry and finally
rickety local fishing boats. There was
Malaria and Dengue fever and no hospital
for hundreds of miles. A bloke broke his
back the week before, and a helicopter
flew in to carry him out. Luckily, he
had Medi-Vac travel insurance - don't
leave home with out it. One fella' Don,
scored the quinella, when he contracted
Malaria and Dengue Fever during a four
month stay last year, but he was back
for another four months this year. He'd
cracked his ribs already this trip and
retreated to civilization for a couple
of weeks to convalesce, but was back for
the rest of the season. "What do
they do about girls?" Kelly wanted
to know. "I'd go crazy."
All this hardship and you'd think a
bunch of highly paid pro surfers turning
up in a couple of luxury charter boats
with a swag of cameramen in tow might
piss you off a bit. Not a bit of it. The
lads couldn't have been more happy to
see us. "It's not every day you get
to see surfing like this," one of
'em reckoned, gallantly giving up his
verandah for one of our cameramen to
shoot from all day.
While the surf stars made fascinating
viewing, some of the characters bunkered
down in this surfing Gilligan's Island
(without the girls) were just as
intriguing. The Spaniards charged hard
and got some insane barrels, and the
Poms did themselves proud too. One new
arrival, a late 30's Aussie fellow, got
chatting to me out in the line-up one
morning like an old friend. Just a
regular working family man doing the
overland thing to brush off the cobwebs.
"I took a month off. I had to do
it. I hadn't been away for three years.
If I didn't do it now, I never
would," he reasoned, convincingly.
"Even the missus was keen for me to
get away." He looked a bit short of
peak condition, carrying a few extra
pounds, a bit red in the face, not lean
and tanned like an everyday surfer -
someone who's been working more than
surfing. The next thing, he's stroking
into this rearing A-frame, right on the
apex of the peak, and I wonder if he's
up to it. He throws himself over the
ledge, late and critical, driving down
the face confidently and into a strong,
sure-footed bottom turn around a
mountain of whitewater, and off down the
line, no problem. In that moment, I felt
like I'd witnessed the re-birth of a
surfer, eye's wide, cheeks puffed, body
straining but all the old instincts
still sharp and intact. In years to
come, I'd wager he'd, look back on that
trip as a pivotal point in his life, the
fork in the road where he chose to
remain a surfer rather than tip over
into the abyss of suburban, nine-to-five
oblivion. We'd caught the tail end of a
swell, but it soon began to drop. There
is some danger in pronouncing a trip a
serious tow-in mission. It happened last
time they tried it on the Crossing -
loaded up with big-wave he-men and
jet-skis and tow boards and tow ropes
and the whole nine yards, somewhere in
the South Pacific last year. Of course -
no swell. Tom was on to it as soon as he
saw this billed as a tow trip.
"Don't call it a Tow trip," he
warned, understanding full well the
inescapable laws of nature ready to doom
such a venture. Ever gone out at night
with casual sex foremost in your mind?
Go on, admit it. Ever noticed if you are
responsible enough to pack condoms, they
seem to send out an invisible signal
from your coin pocket or your wallet, on
a special frequency only women can
detect, that reveals you as a desperate,
lecherous, heat-seeking missile? Packing
connies almost guarantees you a lonely
night. Same with jet-skis, tow boards
and big-wave heros. Pack them and the
swell is sure to evaporate.
Expectations, you see, kill
possibilities. When you have a
preconceived notion of what a trip, or a
night out, or a run down the coast
should be to qualify as a success, you
kill the magic of spontaneity,
unforeseen new options and the wonder of
the moment.
With all the pulsing testosterone,
finely tuned tow-boards and highly
powered jet-skis on board, and no life
threatening waves, something had to
give.
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"Things explode out on boats.
Everyone's moods swing and change. It's
a constant case study in human behavior,
and all the chemical make-ups of those
on board" observed boat trip
veteran Tom wisely. Sure enough, as the
swell dropped, our crew went to town on
the four to six foot rights regardless,
with the skis and tow-boards, and very
nearly created a whole new sport. It
might not be the purist's cup of tea,
but the possibilities opened up in a
small to medium surf with the skis and
footstraps is mind-boggling. One
afternoon, Dave and Kelly put on a show
that resembled those video surfing games
where you merrily spin the little man
through quadruple aerial 360s for
maximum points. With his windsurfing
background, Dave has the aerial flip
thing wired and, teamed up with Kelly
and his aerial expertise, the pair went
mad. Whipping each other into peaks from
the shoulder, they'd pull 50 metre
cutbacks, 10 metre air drop floaters
over six-foot barrels, and all manner of
spinning aerial dismounts, swooping on
each other with the ski and towing back
out for more before you could blink. I
saw maneuvers that have no names, that
my brain could barely process. At one
stage Kelly poured all his blistering
speed into what I can only describe as
an underwater cutback, deliberately
burying himself and his board into the
wave face in the mouth of the tube,
somehow winding up laying back in the
barrel with the nose of his board
pointed at the lip, before coolly
whipping the board back under him and
riding out of the thing. |
"You can get a little sloppy with
the straps because it's so easy to
recover," he noted afterwards. Ever
the perfectionist.
"I've never surfed with straps
before in small waves so I'm just
learning what's possible," Kelly
reflected later obviously excited by the
potential. "How many sessions do
you have when you say, I wish I was over
there, I wish I was over there? Now, you
can be 100 yards away in five
seconds." "All the stuff
that's possible with snowboarding is
possible with straps," Dave
reckoned.
This was all good and fine, but it was
not why we'd come here. You can hardly
pretend to be boldly going where no
surfer has gone before, when there's a
mini United Nations of fellow surfers
camped on the beach. And while they'd
enjoyed the show, after a couple of days
the ski was going to wear a bit thin
with them, even if we stuck to the
outside bombs. Thus, we set off into two
days of rain and small swell. The DVD
players got a thrashing. Snatch was the
hit pick of the week - The Pommy Pulp
Fictionish gangster spoof - and soon
Ross and Tom were jabbering away all day
in thick Cockney accents, calling
everyone "Turkish" out of the
corner of their mouths. We pulled the
classic surf check runaround - you know
the one - where you drive around all day
and end up where you started. "Is
that where we've been surfing? I feel
like we should be in Sri Lanka by
now," Ross observed, squinting over
at the familiar, lumpy line up after
hours of motoring about neighboring
islands.
The rain let up eventually, so Tom and
Kelly went diving, while Ross, Dave and
Pete bravely fronted up for the dreaded
interview session, with no fewer than
three cameras trained on them as they
discussed their big-wave deeds. Pete is
a classic, a big, friendly lumberjack of
a fellow, conceived in Hawaii, when his
dad shaped boards in Mokaleia, while his
mum sold Avon, and born in Santa Cruz
after his parents moved there and opened
a surf shop. "The shop, my bedroom
and the shaping bay were all right next
to each other," Pete reminisced
fondly.
There's a wonderful moment,
mid-interview, when a local
"feral" fishing boat chugged
by with eight or so surfers on board, as
our big-wave guys front the cameras, on
the rear deck of the might Indies
Trader. There's no weird vibe, just
understanding smiles between these
fellow surfers on opposite ends of the
surf trip spectrum.
One morning, I notice a strange warning
sticker on one of the jet-skis.
"Strong streams of water from the
jet nozzle can be dangerous and cause
serious injury when directed at the body
orifices (rectum and vagina)."
Well, it had honestly never occurred to
me, but I guess if you were stuck out
here long enough... |
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We anchor in a beautiful bay, islands
dotted everywhere, but precious little
swell. I lose track of time, days even.
One night I open my eyes from a deep
sleep and out the porthole by my head I
see another, gleaming blue vessel cruise
up alongside, and hear a great clammer
of loud greetings. It is the Indies
Trader III, the latest addition to
Martin's fleet, a vessel of such
opulence and luxury that a berth goes
for around US$400 per person, a night. I
stumble out of my cabin to see what the
commotion is. Martin is standing right
there in front of me on the deck of his
new toy, grinning from ear to ear,
extending a hand and, before I can wipe
the sleep from my eyes he's yanked me
aboard and transported me to another
world - a world where you might expect
to find Hugh Hefner scuffing around in
his pyjamas and slippers, and playboy
bunnies draped about the furniture.
There's carpet throughout, a huge
leather lounge, a grand dining table
with seats for 12, a timber-paneled bar
with every spirit imaginable in stock,
queen-sized beds with en-suites, and a
huge map of the world occupying one
whole wall of the main living area. It's
currently occupied by a bunch of good
old American boys, 50-ish surf dogs who
must have somehow struck it rich. And
Darrick, grinning away along for the
ride. The Bourbon and Cokes are flying
about, Credence is cranking on the
stereo and I get the grand tour, feeling
like I'm in a dream.
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DD is very wary about the tow-in thing
out here, when he hears the boys have
been using the skis. "Could you
paddle in?" he quizzes, earnestly.
"Were there other guys out?"
The answer is, yes, to both. "Be
careful with that," he warns,
seriously, brow furrowing with concern,
"You've seen the monster we've
created at home. Six-foot backyards,
skis buzzing everywhere."
I wake up in the morning and the Indies
III is gone and I wonder whether I
dreamt the whole thing, except Martin is
now on our boat and he wasn't yesterday. |
The days melt into one another. Island
after island, bay after bay, reef after
headlands. I have no idea where we are.
Albert's secrets are safe. It's baking
hot. Not a breath of wind. Flying fish
scatter and skim across the sheet-glass
water in our wake. A few of the beaches
we stop at are covered in turtle nests,
the tracks of prospective mothers
criss-crossing the sand. The swell is
still small. We come across a nice
righthand point, two to three feet, but
peeling for hundreds of yards. There's
another yacht there, and a couple of
people surfing. Like the fish, empty
waves are harder to come by than they
once were. It's good to get wet and the
yachties seem fine with company - a guy
and four girls on board. He's a merchant
seaman who works for 6months, then sails
for 6 months. How does he happen to be
here, on a yacht, surfing perfect waves
with four women, I have to ask?
"I could tell you a sea story. I'm
hung like a horse." He laughs,
before revealing the true story. His
girlfriend and her buddies helped him
paint and renovate his yacht up in
Thailand so he promised to take them to
this secret spot as reward, on the
strict condition that they never
breathed a word of it to anyone. They'd
been there two hours when we rocked up.
"It takes a lot of effort, but when
you're sitting out in the water
somewhere like here it's worth every
penny," He tells me. Three single
women, zapping about in their zodiac or
sunbaking on the beach in bikinis, out
here in the middle of nowhere, of course
hold no interest to the vast majority of
our crew - in happy committed
relationships. The one single man
aboard, Guy, the cook on Indies II,
however, bakes them muffins and paddles
them over to there yacht on a bodyboard.
"That's not a good look," Ross
warns. " At least take a
surfboard." The point is fun,
gentle, not real hollow, but very
rippable. The surf comes up a couple of
feet the next day and everyone has a
ball. Kelly's surfing is outrageous -
he's trying to perfect his aerial flips
and lands a couple on the back of the
wave - he's up there so long the wave
has passed by the time he get's back
down. One late - arvo session, as the
sun sets and the sky does it's thing,
small purple and gold fish swim about us
in the line-up, neatly mirroring the
colours of the twilght. One appears to
be trying to play with Kelly, nipping
and pecking at him then ducking away
when he tries to catch it with cupped
hands. It must be attracted to the
colours of his board, I suggest. "I
think we've got something special going
on, me and the 'fish," Kelly
reckons.
The Indies I lifts anchor and moves down
the point to find a safe place to moor
for the night, and all of a sudden our
only lineup spot is gone. There is
nothing but earth, sea and sky, and I
suddenly feel quite tiny. The tinny
comes to collect us as the stars blink
on like street lights. And so it goes
on. Serious swell looks at least a week
away, and a decision is made to extend
the trip. One boat has to return to
port, but the other is going to stay out
and wait for waves, however long it
takes and the crew must split up. Tom,
Dave, Ry and a few of us media people
head in early, while the others bunker
down on the Indies I for the long haul.
We surf a super fun left on the way home
that kind of makes the trip for me, and
say our goodbyes. The others will score
a series of stunning lefts barreling
over shallow reef in the days ahead, as
the swell finally kicks in and they get
to do their thing - Kelly finally
landing a flip, before spraining his
ankle trying it in straps.
I could be bummed but I'm not, just
grateful for the time at sea. Hell,
these charter boats might be the soft
option, and I salute the crew who do it
tough under their own steam, the
hardships they endure, the
self-awareness that must cultivate. And
the inevitable spread of surf tourism
will continue to encroach upon some
people's private slices of paradise. And
I'm sorry for that. But somehow, if we
can just learn to tread softly, I feel
like the more people who get to sit out
here for a couple of weeks of their
life, even once, and see and feel what
it is to bob around on a boat or camp
out on a magical tropical island -
seeing the flying fish and the jungle
and the sunsets and the spinning reef
waves - the better off we'll all be. I
always feel subtly changed after time on
a boat, come home and see everything
through fresh eyes, like some part of me
dissolves and something new arises in
it's place out there in the water. I'm
genuinely amazed how cool the other
travelers we encountered were - no hint
of territorialism and happy to enjoy the
show - even with our media entourage and
jet-skis and the live internet feeds.
And I hope we did no harm.
Out there, it all seemed so simple,
reduce to basic necessities and urges -
find waves, anchor, surf, eat, sleep, do
it again, or move on. If only life could
be like that. |
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