I had already made my decision – staying home and relaxing on the couch after dinner was the ideal way to spend my saturday night. No parties, no dramas, just a good feed and some serious chill time.

Then the call that would seriously screw up my simple plan came through from peripatetic photographer, Al Mackinnon.

Al had been watching a fierce hurricane spin across the Caribbean, devastating parts of Jamaica, Cuba and even the low- lying Bahamas as it twisted across the western Atlantic Ocean. Cyclone-induced carnage and perfect waves have always been strange co-conspirators. The agony of those who lose lives and homes juxtaposed by the ecstasy of surfers lucky enough to ride coiling swells on the fringes of the intense barometric lows. Nature’s Yin and Yang on display.

According to Al, this one was due to take a very particular path – hence the call.

“That means it’ll be throwing swell back down to where it’s just come from,” claimed an amped up Al. He said he knew of an island not far removed from the storm’s track that had, apparently, escaped the worst of the damage. He warned me that chasing this hypnotically hollow wave was not without its pitfalls. Under the circumstances it would be hard to reach and may even be flooded. As a flat, isolated island the sun would be particularly harsh, and doctors would certainly not be ‘around the corner’ and even food might be hard to come by. In other words, we’d need to take supplies and prepare for a tricky mission. “But, if we score, we’ll score some seriously good waves,” he assured me.

The catch? I’d need to abandon the couch plan and leave pretty much right away.

Next morning, I flew from Portugal to our rendezvous at a London airport. This was the first time I’d met Al, and from the moment we shook hands luck was on our side. It started at the check-in counter where the lady offered us an upgrade because the flight was overbooked. For the first time in my life, I saw a gap between my knees and the seat in front of me on a plane journey.

After numerous flight changes, island hops and airport delays, which could have easily sent the trip sideways, we had another crucial slice of luck when we caught the last inter-island flight to our destination.

Initially, we were informed we wouldn’t be able to travel. As the plane was so small the airline would not accept boards if other passengers had luggage. Miraculously, as the minutes ticked away no other luggage- wielding passengers arrived. Our only flight companion was a lady who’d gone to the neighbouring island on a KFC run – thus her only ‘luggage’ was the bucket of rapidly cooling fried chicken on her lap. The boards made it on safely and suddenly, what began as a couch-bound, Caribbean surfing fantasy started to become increasingly real.

As we descended upon our destination, well-defined lines of swell wrapped around the little island. From the plane’s window we spied a point so stunningly shaped that all my previous notions of the perfect set-up were permanently altered.

There was no formal vehicle hire company on the island, but our good fortune continued. We found a car to rent from a flamboyant, entrepreneurial gentleman who was happy to make a fast deal. Our island ride lacked some of the essentials – like brakes, seatbelts and working windows, but despite its state of disrepair we soon came to love it anyway.

Driving out, all we had to guide us were our recent, bird’s-eye memories of the island’s lay-out and the few vague clues people had tossed our way. This island is so small that every time you asked someone for directions the answer was the same, “Over there, man”. The response was typically accompanied by a finger pointed roughly in the right direction. No left or right specifics, just a straight line to… somewhere over there. It was confusing, wonderfully comical and frustrating all at once because we knew ‘somewhere over there’ was a reeling, empty right point.

So, we drove in a straight line until the road turned to mud, then still water of
no immediately determinable depth. Yes, much of the island had indeed been flooded and what was once a road had been transformed into a lake since the storm. Soon, water was flowing through the rust holes in the car’s floor, then over the hood. At this point we were in so deep that if we stopped, we’d be stuck and eventually submerged.

I’d never done much off-roading, so Al was giving me tips, but it got to the point where he reduced the tutelage to its simplest principles and was just shouting, “Don’t take your foot off that f**king pedal!” We were left with no choice but to plough on, eventually trying to make it out of the giant puddle by angling into the dense bush that lined the edge of the ‘road’. Somehow, we emerged from the water; bumped, crashed, and scraped through the scrub and at some point, landed immobile on a sand dune with a smoking motor and much of the lake inside the car.

There was complete stillness – a dazed, stunned silence but for the quiet hissing of steam from the engine. And then suddenly, a loud ‘BOOM!’ followed by a deep rumble as what we excitedly realised was a wave crashing violently somewhere just out of sight. As instructed, we’d gone in a straight line – and we’d found the beach.

We weren’t sure if we’d killed the car or not but resolved to deal with it later. There were more pressing matters like right- hand points to address. Al had to gather all his gear, but I just needed wax and my board, and seconds after crashing the car I was ready to go. Desperate to see what was really going on, I apologised to Al and ran through the bush and out onto the open beach. I looked around and there it was: a vision splendid that was truly hard to process – an empty, never-ending, double- overhead right-hander grinding down a point of talcum-white sand.

The wave was exclusively ours the whole time we were there. I didn’t see a single wave surfed until the end of the swell when Al paddled out to join me. It was strange to be out there all alone and not see another wave ridden. No human frame of reference on how to approach the wave or fellow surfer with whom to trade lineup banter and share the stoke. Don’t get me wrong, I delighted in filling my boots with all those barrels, but it was a different experience.

All those spitting, spinning, lime-lit vortexes just passing by – empty.

I wished I could gather them in a bag and use them on days when they’re needed back home, or on future surf trips, which may never again yield such dizzyingly perfect results.

Of course, there had to be a downside. I’ll always think of this place as ‘Mosquito Point’ because it was where we faced the most brutal and continuous mosquito assault in the history of surf travel. After three days, Al’s white t-shirt looked like a four-year-old had worn it on a ketchup binge, so red was it from the blood of all the mosquitoes he’d swatted. He insisted he’d been through the jungles of East Africa, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and several other mosquito-laden zones but nothing, ‘NOTHING’! he’d encountered could’ve prepared him for the onslaught we sustained on that island.

All the precipitation had created countless pools of standing water and the little devils were breeding like crazy. One evening, after just half an hour’s exposure, I counted more than two hundred bites on Al’s back alone. We estimated there was nearly a thousand nips from the little vampires over his whole body – it was truly the stuff of bloodsucking nightmares. Any exposed part of our skin swelled up, resulting in the most intense itchiness imaginable. The days of barrelled bliss were countered by sleepless nights and bodies left red raw by the nocturnal raids.

Having said all that, both Al and I agreed the astronomical expense of the trip and the infernal bites were a small price to pay for getting the most incredible waves of our lives, to ourselves in the most unspoilt setting imaginable.

Before this trip, if I were asked to hypothetically describe the perfect wave, I doubt my wildest imaginings would do justice to the waves I rode. I had literally never conceived of a wave so flawless. If it wasn’t for Al’s photographic evidence, I’d think it had all been a dream – the kind of dream, in fact, that you might have on a lazy Saturday night when you fall asleep on the couch after dinner.