Photo: Nathan Florence // YouTube
As a massive south swell filtered through the Pacific Ocean, surfers jetted off to the iconic islands of French Polynesia and Micronesia, among others, to get a piece of the waves on offer. But Nathan Florence decided to take a risk and explore a less-visited island somewhere nearby. It didn’t disappoint.
In his latest vlog, after completing a 20-mile foil race at home on Oahu, Florence sped to the airport to catch a flight to an undisclosed island to see how it was handling the massive swell. He found perfect left slabs breaking over a shallow coral reef.
Equally as hard as threading the consequential tubes, just getting to the wave was a challenge. Florence had to delicately walk over a reef that he coined “the wall of urchins” before even reaching the lineup.
Luckily, his reef booties kept his feet mostly free of urchin spines, and he shared a morning of tubes with just one other bodyboarder in the water.
“What do you do if you find something and you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s surfable,’ and you’re alone?” Florence says in the vlog. “You play the risk game. The exciting part of doing trips like this is, what are you going to find? What are you going to do when you find it? How are you going to figure out a way to safely surf it, but also get a gnarly one?”
“And then to have a session like this, hopping between all of that and the searching is the best part of surf travel,” he adds. “I’m so blessed to be doing it.”
