Solomon: Basically big tankers and stuff. If they come during the night and run into you’re completely done. No one will ever know, the tanker will never know. They won’t feel it. Those things are hundreds of feet long. The main thing at nights, 24 hours a day, there’s someone on watch making sure that there’s not a big boat or log or something that we can go into. That’s pretty much the most dangerous part of the trip.
Cyrus: You talked about finding this completely isolated point break in the Maldives. From a surfing perspective, were there any other amazing discoveries you guys made?
Solomon: Pretty much just the Maldives. There are big surf chargers that go there, but we were able to find this little atoll in the middle of nowhere.
Lonely? Doubtful.
Cyrus: How long did you stay there for?
Solomon: Two weeks.
Cyrus: Just that one spot?
Solomon: Yeah.
Cyrus: You had it all to yourself?
Solomon: All to ourselves.
Cyrus: Where did the journey end? When it was over, where did you guys finally park?
Solomon: The whole trip took us 68 days, 9,000 kilometers. We ended in Phuket, Thailand. It was amazing just getting there. We cracked a bottle of Champagne as we sailed in. It was really awesome. We spent a couple weeks traveling around those islands, and then flew straight here.
Cyrus: What do you guys eat when you’re on a trip like that? Do you fish, or do you have food prepared?
Solomon: We caught amazing tuna, and my friend’s girlfriend made us sushi every time. It was amazing. And then we basically just stocked up on rice and pasta and that kind of stuff. And in Madagascar we had some really amazing fresh fruit. You’ve got some small little market in Madagascar that you can get a bunch of the local food, and bring it onto the boat and see what you can make.
Cyrus: How was Madagascar?
Solomon: Madagascar is still very much Africa. People ask me what I mean by that, but I guess you have go to Africa. People are poor, really poor, a lot of people drinking. Alcohol is a big problem. The island is beautiful and it’s amazing. It’s cheap. It’s definitely a good place to go check out. It’s wild. We saw lemurs and stuff just jumping around. Saw 100 year-old tortoises. Amazing diving. It was beautiful.
Cyrus: You sent me this video where you decided to go diving where these sharks are.
Solomon: What happened was, before we got to Madagascar we had been shooting some fish. Spear fishing. We’d seen a bunch of sharks by the boat, and I thought it would be a way to respect the sharks. I thought it would be cool to jump in.
Cyrus: What type of sharks were these?
Solomon: Oceanic Whites. They are apparently really dangerous, which I found out later.
Cyrus: Oceanic Whites. So, they’re probably part of the Great White family, right?
Solomon: I don’t know.
Cyrus: They look similar. They don’t look friendly.
Solomon: I jumped in and played with the sharks, and I started to film them. The first shark was really cool, let me swim up to it and was super peaceful and stuff. I was psyched. There were five sharks in the water. I was trying to keep a look out on all of them, and then this one shark, I don’t know what happened. He was kind of over me, maybe had a bad day, but he swung around and tried to bite me like four or five times and I was about to use my hand and was like, ‘No, that’s probably not a good idea.’
Cyrus: Probably not.
Solomon: So, I was able to use my knee a couple of times and then I was able to kick him away right at the end and then after trying to bite me about five times, he swam away.
Cyrus: Do you have a message for your fellow Maverick’s peers in terms of you becoming an alternate for next season, or will you let your surfing decided for itself?
Solomon: That’s a political thing. I don’t want to say anything about that. Hopefully one day the guys will be like, ‘You know, he deserves to be in’. I don’t care whether it takes five years or ten years, when they decide I need to be in, I want to do it. There’s two ways of getting in. One is, you can go and suck up to all the right people. I just want to get in because I deserve to be in. I don’t want to be nice to the right people.
Cyrus: What was your worst big wave wipeout?
Solomon: Probably last year at Dungeons. I had a really bad wipeout. We were towing. I went straight into a big set and it just destroyed me. It absolutely murdered me. And I actually had a flotation vest on so those normally help, but even with that vest on I had to hold on. When I came up the guys were throwing other guys off the skis because they were super worried about me. And when I came up I guess my eyes were just like goldfish. I looked guppy. So that was really bad. That one is actually still with me. I’m still trying to get over that one. Big wave surfing is pretty much a mental thing.
Cyrus: It just takes huge balls. Who are your sponsors? Who is paying your bills?
Solomon: I’m sponsored by Reef Wetsuits in South Africa. And Vida e Caffe, it’s a chain, kind of like Starbucks, and then Gold Surfboards and South Clothing.
Cyrus: You have a blog detailing all your adventures. Where can people find it?
Solomon: My website is www.franksolomon.co.za. I’ve got all my stories on there, some photos and my email address if you want to get involved in my site. I am always looking for people to help me out and advertise. (Laughing)
Cyrus: Best of luck in your future adventures and I hope to see you on that alternate list for Maverick’s and maybe one day get invited to the contest itself. Thanks for being in Northern California!
Solomon: Totally dude. Thanks so much. Love San Francisco. Great city. Love California. All the people are amazing and yeah, hopefully I’ll be in it soon.
Danielle Schraner contributed to this story.
