John John Florence and his family are currently in the middle one of the greatest adventures they’ll ever take. After a hiatus from being the best surfer on Tour, Florence decided he would spend a few years with his wife and young son sailing the ocean blue. And luckily for us who aren’t lucky enough to be able to take a few years off and go sailing, he’s documenting a whole lot of it.
In the most recent YouTube installment, titled “A Million Years of Rain,” John and his wife Lauryn, brother Ivan, Erik Knutson, and Jack Davidson sailed for 12 days straight. The goal was to make their way to one of the most remote and remarkable places in the world: the Marquesas.
“We arrived in the Marquesas in the dark which added to the feeling of not knowing,” John wrote. “We had an idea that it would be similar to parts of Hawaii with big mountains and deep valleys, but when we woke up the next day, we were all kind of just blown away by the landscape. It really felt like nowhere else we had ever been. Everything was raw and alive. There were giant waterfalls falling out of the sky, the land was this deep lush green, and there were vertical cliffs that fell straight into the ocean and continued down underwater.”
Often, the best part of a surf trip isn’t the waves. It’s the places, the people, and the experiences that truly make for a great trip, and the Florence family’s South Pacific sojourn is proof of that. The waves are included, yes, but the brunt of this 16-minute masterpiece is more of a travelogue than a surf film. Florence uses surfing as the skeleton for his adventures, but the meat on the bones is the stuff that comes along with looking for surf.
“Everything about the landscape had a dramatic feel to it,” Florence said of the area. “Once we would go into land it was probably the most productive and alive place we had ever been. We have never been offered so much fruit. Everyone was so welcoming and sharing with everything they were growing.”
