BARREL!!!!

Entus, Abun, and Hambali were busy playing chess and kicking back some beer that Timmy brought on the trip. They were the three crew members on the small wooden boat we took out to the island. Every once in a while, they'd look up, and yell out with a rolled double r, "BARREL!!!!!!!!" Then it'd be right back to chess and beer.

This is Daniel Jones on this recent Surfing Magazine cover. I remember this wave well, it's burned into my mind forver. But not burnt onto my film...I finished my roll of film on Timmy's wave right before this one. Dustin Humphrey was ill, and in the water shooting. And he got this shot. It was the most beautiful wave I have ever seen. And I kid you not, it actually got bigger and hollower moments after this was shot. This wave grows in size as it speeds down the reef.

I first met Daniel and his brother, Mikala, on Christmas Island, Kiribati, a year and a half ago. Since then, they have both become a big part of this film. Youngest brother, Keoni, has joined in recently too.

Hangs Upon Nothing got its first public mention in the article that went along with this cover too. Thanks guys!

Samoa tsunami

Tim Southall has a pretty amazing tsunami story. I have asked his permission to post it here, and will if he is ok with it. To briefly sum it up, he was in the water with six other surfers at a reef break off the south coast of Upolu, Samoa. Apparently they were not aware an earthquake had occured. The reef breaks are almost all quite far from land around there. When the water began draining off the reef, they all knew what was happening. Four of them including Tim were able to paddle out to deep water as the Tsunami came through. The other three surfers headed towards shore and got pummeled by the waves from the tsunami. They all survived. Thankfully all staff and guests at Maninoa Surf Camp survived also. Sounds like the south coast of Upolu got hammered pretty hard though.

glassy empty waves

poster sketch for the film

A few days ago I went with Mikala and his right hand man, Koming, and friend Scott, looking for waves to surf and shoot. At sunrise we ended up at the same secluded spot we went to the day before. It had been overhead and barreling, and was looking quite good the day before. I shot from land and Mikala surfed alone. The plan was to shoot in the water on this, our second day there.

It didn't look quite as perfect this day. And the swell had dropped some. Still, where I'm from, it would be considered epic. Koming didn't wan't to come out, "Its not that good," he said. If I grew up in a land of perfect waves, I might think the same.

"He just doesn't want to go right!" Mikala said. Mikala and I paddled out, and the bumps disappeared. It was total glass. Rice fields and temples could be seen from the water. And a few fishing boats out beyond us. The water was clean, and shined a beautiful silver blue in the morning. The sand below was black.

As beautiful as this sounds, there was a surprising amount of plastic rubbish on the beach. Like most empty beaches I have been to recently.

Looking to the north there are miles and miles of peaks that probably no one was on. I'm sure soon enough these will see more people. But there are still uncrowded waves to be found.