Indonesia Surf Trip

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I just went to Indonesia on a boat trip with 7 amazingly diverse, musically inclined, artistically talented, funny chicks. If I could say all those in one sentence properly they were all of the above. Kassia Meador and myself planned a boat trip to Indo with a more diverse group of women than we have ever gone with before. Usually we go on trips based on who’s rated what and who’s killing it at that time and only for purposes of getting good photos and film. This time we didn’t really think about photos or filming as much as a good vibe. We just wanted to go on a chill boat trip with some talented women surfers in and out of the water. So we got together and put a core group of girls together and what we came up with was Lee Ann Curren aka ( charger) and daughter of the infamous Tom Curren. It was scary the similarities between her and her father and she was always charging and playing really good tunes on the boat. And I gave her mad props for cutting her bangs herself the morning of her departure for the boat trip. Sally Fitsgibbons aka (Giblet) official token grom of the trip who surfed better than just about anyone in Indonesia at the time and might I add has just qualified for the Asp WCT womens world tour two weeks after our trip at 17 and half way through the year. I feel honored having been able to go on a trip with her before she is untouchable, haha. Serena Brooke aka ( tassie devil) my bunk mate and hell charger. She did the biggest floater I have ever seen a woman do on this six foot bombie . She showed up to Indo without clothes, only army pants and a puff jacket in hand. So she had an entire megan wardrobe on her hand . it was funny, but for her only funny for a couple of days. Stephanie Gilmore, need I say more. World Champion, blues specialty guitarist, ear to ear smiles, and maybe the best female to ever stand on a surfboard. Yes it was a treat to watch her on every wave she caught. You can learn so much by watching steph for a few hours which I got to do because I was sick for the first week of the boat trip. I started off with super bad shoulder tendonitis and couldn’t even lift my arm to drink a cup of coffee. But it was ok , I was in good spirits and just went swimming and videod the girls for days. So at least I have a fun collection of footage. How bummed can you get, in indo? Then I got a mysterious flu and was out for a few more days. But the chef was making the best ginger, lemon , honey teas for myself, jeff, and sonny our filmers. We were all down for the count. Then there is Lyndsay Noyes who rode weird boards all the time. Despite the fact that she is extremely talented on a modern day short board she rode this thing called an Alea . so weird. Its what the Hawaiians used when surfing was first introduced. It’s about half an inch thick and 5 foot long. A wood plank with no wax was her choice of equipment. Pretty amazing stuff, oh and she plays a mean guitar as well. Last but not least there is Kassia Meador, female surfing icon. The toes on the nose queen and one of the main facesof Roxy for the past 10 years. She was the only other girl besides myself that doesn’t play guitar, so I didn’t feel that out of place. But she is very artistic and was always drawing on her board or taking photos. She was on iphoto when she wasn’t surfing. She also had the biggest laugh on the boat. All around really good mellow crew.

This year I took it upon myself to invest in a really good camera and video camera so I can look back on my amazing life and never forget the beautiful people and places surfing has allowed me to share. At 30 I guess you realize that it won’t last forever so If there is anything you can do to make memories last then I will preserve those memories. Our trip was hosted by the Indies Trader 2 and captained by Albert , um forgot his last name. haha. But he is a coffee connoisseur and gave us lessons on coffe every afternoon at 3. He is one of the very first Mentawai captains and has been working in Indo for a long time, his main goal was to always get us waves without too many people, which we succeeded quite often in doing so.

We surfed so many different types of waves and used various types of equipment. I brought a red finless board with me to Indo and it was super hard to surf. I was a bit cocky and thought that I would own the thing. Well it owned me and I looked like a crab doing five 360s a wave. Lynz who at times looked just as funny as me couldn’t stop laughing.

One morning we were surfing this little beach break and the captain wasn’t paying attention and thought we would do a floater over this wave with 6 of us in a tin boat, we went over with the lip. Sonny, jeff, serena and I all bailed out but Lynz stayed in and we thought she was done for and somehow Albert pulled through and she only had a few bruises. Even though I laugh it was one of the scariest boat incidents I had ever been in.

I learned about coffee that is pooped out by monkeys and actually tastes like the best coffee in the world. People pay big money to drink this stuff they call coffee Luac. It wasn’t your typical boat trip.

We surfed some pretty fun waves that allowed us to all try and catch up with Sally in the air department. But not really. She was doing 2 airs a wave, and I was doing crab airs. Haha. Never too late to try I guess. I think what helped sally was she had so much energy from eating 2 plates full of food a meal so she had to burn it off somehow. There wasn’t much fish in Indonesia this time, but lucky for my I caught a hungry little sucker. Cook made a delicious meal out of it. Our cook was pretty insane and had been Madonna’s personal chef before so we all thought he was pretty much the coolest guy ever, plus he had the best Kiwi accent.

One night I decided to have a few BingTang beers and do a solo Inxs act and the groms had never witnessed this before. I grabbed Lee Anns guitar and played suicide blonde air guitar and they secretly filmed it. So when I’m old I can watch myself make an arse of myself. Hee hee .

We watched movies and jammed music when we weren’t surfing. We got quite a few waves to ourselves but here and there would be other boats and we would have to share waves. One day we ran into a cool boat full of Japanese surfers which was funny. Kassia does this really good Japanese impression so she decided to utilize it and speak to them with her funny accent. It was hilarious. Every afternoon we would sit around in the lineup or the tin boat and talk crap and have a beer and just laugh at each otherI faced my fears and jumped off the top of the boat. I was so scared but glad I did it in the end. All the girls were yelling from lances rights calling me a wuss if I didn’t do it. So I had to.

Poor Serena had to share a room with me and my bag somehow caught the same virus as me and vomited all over the room. Haha. She is such a clean person too, it must have pissed her off. My bag exploded everywhere. I get so ADD that I go for a surf and go to change but want to rush upstairs so fast that I just tear my bag apart. We watched a couple of super bad movies as well. One of the movies we had to hid Sallys eyes from it.

On the last two days of the trip we ran into another boat load of female surfers on the start of their trip. It was a pretty amazing thing. In all of the years I had been going to the Mentawais since 1997 there has always been like the token female boat trip. Well it shows how times have changed because it was the first time there has ever been two female trips in the mentawais at the same time. It was a sight to see, 15 girls taking over perfect lances right. That last day was epic and we got to share it with a bunch of our other friends. We got barreled almost every wave and couldn’t stop smiling. We were trying to scheme a way to stay out another week. It was funny. But in the end, I got barreled on my last wave did I sick turn, kicked out and ended up a foot from the tin boat. They threw me a beer and I watched Steph get shacked, the sunset beautifully over the land behind us, and I just smiled cause it was the funnest trip I had ever had to indo. The waves weren’t perfect the whole time, just fun. But the vibe was good. The vibe. So now when I go back to Indo or go on another surf trip I will never forget its not the waves that make a trip , it’s the good times and good vibes.