Surfing is popular. It’s fun. It’s cool. It has sex appeal. And while the flocks of new surfers may suck for the folks that have been doing it for some time, they are inevitable. More surfers, more crowds. Aside from eggy lineups and more $$$ for corpo surf brands, more surfers means a bigger drive to do something else, something innately engrained in our collective mind: travel, explore, discover. And that’s a good thing.
Rip Curl’s resurrected “Search” series is the perfect embodiment of that Christopher Columbus mentality. Pioneering new waves, not for the bragging rights, but for the personal pleasure brought from exploration. In the newest episode of “The Search,” Rip Curlers Luke Hynd, Dillon Perillo, and Pat Curren make their way to an unnamed island in hopes of a wave previously unsurfed. Just goes to show that in this modern era, one of Google earth and waves found on Instagram and virtual reality surfing, the dream is still alive, surf exploration isn’t dead, there are still virgin waves out there to be unveiled. You just have to know where to go.
Like some of the best stories, this one began with a whispered rumor of some far-flung islands…
