“I visited him last year in Tahiti and the guy is just, what you see is what you get. He’s happy. He’s mellow. And he sees waves before everybody else. I don’t know how.”
Before I’ve ever had a chance to have a one on one conversation with Manoa Drollet, this is how New Zealand’s very own Daniel Kereopa describes his French Polynesian friend to me. Manoa’s happy. And Manoa’s mellow. From what I can tell after observing the man during a two week road trip up and down New Zealand’s North and South Islands for the second annual Ultimate Waterman, this is spot on. The happy part doesn’t surprise me. Every time you see Manoa on the beach or in a group of people he appears content, as if he’s simply soaking up the scene around him. But mellow? This is a man whose surfing is synonymous with taming the world’s meanest wave. You’d hardly expect him to be “mellow.”
But he is mellow. He’s so mellow and so quiet most of the time that when I finally find myself in a private conversation with Manoa I have no idea how to break the ice. So he does it for me instead.
“Have you ever been to Tahiti?” he asks me in a way that foreshadows I’m missing out on something special if the answer is no. My answer is in fact no, I’ve never been to Tahiti, so Drollet immediately dives into painting what life is like in his corner of the South Pacific. Right away you’ll recognize that his home is in fact pretty special. He explains that life in Tahiti is about four things: the ocean, nature, your friends and your family. He also adds that it’s very laid back. This part doesn’t surprise me much.
“It’s the French side of Polynesian culture,” he explains, which I soon find out comes from a Polynesian foundation mixed with a strong Christian presence. “We’re pretty much in tune with our environment and I don’t think there’s ever been a break from that lifestyle. We are very ocean oriented.”
The specifics of just how ocean oriented life is in Tahiti are soon laid out. In Manoa’s case he says being in a tropical paradise with quality waves meant he rarely wanted to leave home. “When I started my surfing career I was going to do the ‘QS, but I realized quickly that I did not like being away from Tahiti to chase points at small events. And somehow when I was a teenager I really liked surfing bigger waves.”
Naturally, “bigger waves” where Manoa’s from meant venturing to the outer reefs and of course a dance or two at Teahupo’o with fellow Tahitian Raimana Van Bastolaer.
“It was a bit sadistic. We kind of enjoyed watching each other get pounded, but in the end we got good skills and we had good experience,” he says. And now he’s laying out the blueprint for how he went from a young “sadistic” Manoa Drollet to the intensely confident waterman he is today.
“If you want to step up to places like Teahupo’o you have to also develop different skills. You have to be able to handle big wipeouts and be confident. Not let panic take over you. So I got into spear fishing when I started to catch bigger waves. That was one of the biggest helps of my surfing career. You won’t care about getting caught in big waves because just a couple days before you might have been 80 feet underwater for 2 and a half minutes.”
Drollet had put somewhat applicable skills on display just the night before, in The Ultimate Waterman’s underwater strength run and swim. The event started by diving into an Olympic sized lap pool and sitting on the pool floor for 30 seconds with a single dumb bell in hand. After 30 seconds each competitor was sent off to run the length of the pool (still underwater) before dropping the dumb bell at the end of the first 25 meters, then swimming freestyle back to their starting point. On his first attempt Manoa did this all in under a minute and ten seconds and earned a second place finish among the eight competitors.
It may sound cliche, but by the end of this trip I’m convinced all these things add up to making Manoa Drollet the man he is. “He let’s his surfing do the talking” is a common remark you’ll hear from other surfers when they talk about him. And the things he can do under the water’s surface seem to translate to his quiet and confident demeanor above the surface. Actually, I think that word DK used was “mellow.” So there he is, Manoa Drollet: The Most Mellow Dude in Surfing.
