For those of you with post-covid Mentawai dreams, dig this: It’s all still here. It’s all still perfect. And for now, it’s downright lonely out here. Which is not to say we did not get here with a big crew. After all, the whole world is on its way and we are just lucky enough to be an advance party. Party being a key word in our case. Matt Biolos, Ian Crane and Corey Lopez and Pete Matthews are with me working on a new LOST movie out here at the Kandui Resort. And the surf , of course, is perfect. The film is a 25th anniversary celebration of their classic film 5’5” x 19 1/4. Remember that one with Andy Irons, Chris Ward and Corey Lopez all riding fish designs through the whole thing? Well, this is a brand version with the 2022 Lost Fish designs starring Ian and Corey and a host of Lost riders and clips from all over the globe. The raw footage I snuck up behind Ian’s computer to see looks insane. The working title is 5’5” by 25. Get it? Stay tuned for that.
It seems to me Matt Biolos is always up to something clever, other than just his designing of super boards. Because right now, right out in front of my grass shack here, eleven kids, ranging from the ages of nine to sixteen, are all terrorizing the spot right out in front. And somehow we brought them all. The spot is a short tropical Trestles that Kelly Slater describes as “The easiest wave in the Mentawai with the most vicious reef out there”. And man, is that ever true. A real leash grabber. But I am getting ahead of myself. So let me just tell you how it all happened and what is going to happen to you if you jump on the Mentawai train.
The call came in on a Wednesday. I was to be joining the Lost/Mayhem crew of Matt Biolos, Ian Crane, Cory Lopez and Pete Matthews for a Mentawai R&D session. Some new secret film project on some new secret boards was in the works. We were to leave Friday. Little was I to know that Biolos, Cory and Pete were also bringing their sons and daughters with them. And that we were joining another hard core group of surf Dads and their kids on this re-newed annual trip. A real family Jamboree. Unlike most pro trips, coming upon the rendezvous at the Padang airport was like some summer camp revival with the grown-ups, industry captains and top surfers alike, playing camp counselors herding the scampering mini-tribe toward the bus. Except that every one of these little kids looked like pro surfer elves, had the best surfboards on earth under their arms and that look of groms who can really rip. I was soon to learn that they all could.
Anyway, as evidenced by the hustle and bustle down at the harbor on the Padang river, things are re-ramping up here in the Mentawai, so get it empty while you can. On the high tide, when the rivermouth is deep enough to clear the headland, the scene looks like a fishing derby headed out to sea. Eager surfers of every stripe, not sunburned yet, appear almost frail as they board the few charter boats that have got their early act together. These surfers, land lubbers for over two years, look mostly stunned that it’s all actually happening. They totter across the bucking gangplanks dragging their sagging board bags behind them, as if they have forgotten the drill. A re-immersion as shocking as an ice bath.
But then there is the channel crossing, the bane of all Mentawai devotees. Depending on your boat, it can take anywhere from four hours to eternity. Thank God we were on the four hour version over the calmest seas I have ever seen in the channel. You do your best to carve out some kind of comfort on the crossing, away from the blistering sun, and hopefully fall asleep to the sound of the three bone rattling Suzuki 250 outboards churning off the stern. Conversation can only be managed at full decibel, if at all. And if not sleep than at least the dolphins and the flying fish and the disappearing coast of West Sumatra can keep you entertained as you get closer and closer to those waves. Those waves. It’s another catch of the throat as you see the Mentawai islands themselves appear like jade smudges on the horizon. Then, like miracles, rising out of the Indian Ocean, growing in relief by the minute.
Eventually the engines wind down and a pregnant hush falls as you cruise into the mooring at Playgrounds in front of the Kandui resort. The astonishing beauty of this wave field, easily the best in the world, is as staggering to the eyes as it has ever been. And the heat, that equatorial heat, swallows you up and the swimming pool clear water calls you as naturally as a favorite song.
And then you scan the surf. With swells rising like the phantoms, you can see six different breaks with the naked eye, all fringing white and spilling in symmetry. But something is off. Not quite right since you were last here. And then you realize it. There isn’t a single person in the water or a single charter boat in sight in the most popular area of the Mentawai. And that makes you dizzy.
On the wooden porch of your room you rip into your board bags and start to panic wax your new board. Scrape, scrape scrape. The kids and the gnarled veterans are already on the dingy to the breaks and you, sweat in your eyes, gnaw at that knot on the tail of your board, trying to get your leash attached, sweat and smeared sunscreen stinging your eyes. You are desperate to make the next dinghy.
And then, suddenly, you are a surfer again. After all this time, time doesn’t matter anymore. You move to the front of the lunging dinghy and you pass the super kids super ripping the break out front and head up the reef and approach the unfolding waves that the grown-ups have staked out. Ian and Cory take off back to back and start surfing like some alien life forms. Ian, well, Ian Crane surfs into the future on every wave. And let us not forget that Cory Lopez, Teahupoo master, was also Andy Irons sparring partner for ten years, was ranked #1 on the ASP tour, almost won it and that at 43, here, he surfs like he could make it to Trestles.
You dive off the boat as soon as it slows and that is the moment. That is the realization of just what exactly you have done. What you’ve achieved. All the trouble and the money and the anxiety and the conjecture and hope and the hassles. In that moment, the plunging into the clear deep, then bobbing on the surface, bubbles swarming your ears, cheeks puffed, crouched and face down in the water, putting your leash on your ankle just right. Then that first breath of air with salt water on your lips and you are sliding up onto the deck of your board, all instinct, all fresh wax smell and paddling into the line-up.
And then that set of waves marches in, the inevitable one, that first set that you are too far away to catch. But others do. And they ride. Proof that your ride is here too. That it’s all possible. That it’s real. That you are here.
And you look and you look, and you paddle faster and you examine every molecule of these waves and you think…
Here I am and there they are.
There it is.
All the roads that lead to why.
The Mentawai.
It’s all still here.
And the rest is up to you.
(More on the secret Lost 5’ 5” x 25 Film and its secret fish boards in a dispatch to come).
