I'm currently in the process of moving my surf travel blog over to www.MorningGlass.com, which is much easier for everyone to remember. My friend Bill has been kind enough to let me use his domain for my rants. After this post, all new blog posts will show up over there, with the archives soon to follow.
See you over there!
Indies Explorer boat first caught my eye when featured in a surf video a while back. It's one of the largest and most recognizable charter boats in Indonesia, a Pinissi schooner over 100 feet long, bright white with two tall sailing masts. I saw this iconic boat at Thunders in August 2006. It was a small day of forgettable surf and 40 people were in the water groveling for some chest-high sets. Indies Trader 4 was also there, so we felt pretty smart that our groveling session didn't cost $1200/person/day.
About Indies Explorer, when I was looking for a Mentawais charter boat I was intrigued by the large size and relatively low per-day cost, but the boat holds 12 guests which was sort of a turn-off and the schedule didn't work out for the dates I had available. That day at Thunders I felt fortunate to have skipped since it looked like the boat didn't have much shaded common space with a view of the surf (always a precious commodity on surf trips). The sleeping cabins below decks all had ventiliation hatches in the middle of the main deck and the deck sloped up forward and aft, basically killing the most logical place for a picnic table, hammocks, etc. When we drove by in our dinghy there were also bits around the stern that looked kind of beat up and run-down. I scrutinized the other boats we came across as much as possible - there are only so many boats over there and I wanted to see what kind of shape they were in, did they pitch and roll a lot when anchored, etc. The truth is that some boats just look better on the internet and Indies Explorer is probably one of them. Using 6-year-old photos on the booking web site is one slightly deceptive practice - recent boat photos are always a good thing to ask for.
Anyway to make a long story short, I was thinking about all this because I recently learned that an overnight storm washed "a big white wooden sailboat" up on the beach in Padang. I don't think there are many other such craft near Padang besides Indies Explorer. For all the things that looked impractical about it you can'd deny the boat has soul. If anyone is thinking about going on Indies Explorer in 2008 or knows if it did in fact hit the beach drop me a line.
It's the beginning of what the cruise industry calls "Wave Season", the first 5 months of the year when the majority of cruises, the majority of leisure travel, and the great majority of indo boat trips get booked. From what I've been hearing Mentawai bookings for the 2008 season have been pretty strong. The 2007 season had slow bookings because of the strong, consistent SE winds in the Ments during July-Aug-September of 2006.
These winds didn't really affect Northern Sumatra but they caused bad word of mouth for the whole area. It's not hard to imagine why - with strong SE wind you blow out all the rights that typically need some combo of N or W wind. When most surfers are regularfoot and HT's, Bank Vaults, and Rifles are blown out for the better part of 3 months, you're going to have mostly dissatisfied guests. If they wanted windy lefts they would have gone to Fiji.
The bottom line is if you've been thinking about a boat trip this year you should book early, especially if you want a specific boat, need specific dates, or want to go off the beaten path. Many of the most popular boats/guides are booked out a year or more in advance by repeat customers. Boats going to more obscure areas like Northern Sumatra or the southern Ments need longer trips, which means fewer total trips to choose from on top of fewer boats that run those routes.
This is the best use of leftover footage I've ever seen. Take leftover footage of the Hobgoods, Taj Burrow, and Yadin Nicol (w/crazy haircut) from Secret Machine (same photogs, same trips), mix with a well paced and synchronized Sasha soundtrack, blend in artsy underwater shots, behind the wave shots, good editing, scenery shots and BAM! you have this DVD. I have a strong affinity for surf movies with great music & great waves. This one has both. I wish my trips to indo had this Sasha soundtrack playing while I was there.
If you really hate electronic music you should probably give this a miss. If you can tolerate or enjoy electronica then this is very well done and you will find it highly re-watchable.. If you had a big TV and a good sound system you could put this DVD on as background at a party and be psyched. The disc automatically starts playing about 20 seconds after you stick it in (more like a CD than a DVD) and automatically loops back to the beginning when it's done.
