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Outside magazine, June 2001 Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Andy Irons shows off his backside.
CONTEST JUDGE MARK RICHARDS, a lanky 43-year-old four-time world champion from New South Wales, tapes a ceiling-to-floor mosquito net around his bed on the Indies Trader II. Despite 95-degree temperatures and dripping humidity, he spends every waking moment in a long-sleeved T-shirt and long pants tucked into his socks, striking a radically different fashion stance from the droopy board-shorts crowd. When he finds a mosquito, Richards smashes it as "revenge" for attempting to bite him.

No one else takes such precautions, though malarial mosquitoes blanket the Mentawais so thickly that contest director Bernie Baker guarantees that someday "you're gonna hear of surfers dying there." In addition to malaria, the Mentawais are plagued by a host of other diseases, including cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, and various worm-borne infections. Very few contest folk bother to hop a dinghy to the islands, and those who do don't stay for long. "Surfing here is more about the waves than a cultural experience," says Taublieb. "Maybe it's better to leave the Mentawaians alone. They don't need to be running around in cutesy Orange County T-shirts."

The highly publicized Boat Trip Challenge, however, will only encourage more visits from the First World's leisure class. Such surf imperialism occurs wherever a developing nation butts up against prime oceanfront. It started in the sixties, when California surfers "discovered" Baja. The Australians followed suit, laying claim to surf breaks in the South Seas. Now in both Mexico and much of Indonesia, the sight of white folks with surfboards elicits a Pavlovian response in local children, who run up begging for money and candy. A recent letter to the Australian surfing magazine Tracks proposed invading Indonesia and making it Australia's seventh state: "We'll start a rumor amongst the Indos that an Aussie tourist dropped a 50,000 rupiah note [about $5 U.S.] somewhere on Borneo and let their rabid lust for cash do the rest," suggested the less than politically correct writer.

One night Chris Malloy is sitting on the deck of the Indies Trader II, gazing at a beachside cooking fire tended by islanders he can't see and will never meet. Malloy, a 29-year-old native Californian whose two brothers, Keith and Dan, are also well-known surfers, now works as a surf filmmaker. He's pensive—his idea of a good tropics read is Crime and Punishment—and almost nonplussed by the luxury of the yacht. "I don't know about this deal," he says, waving his hand to indicate the boat's wet bar, nicely appointed cabins, and three-member kitchen staff. "It's kind of a perversion. I just got back from a primitive boat in the Maldives where we shivered on the deck, trying to sleep in the rain. That's kind of how it should be." Malloy has just begun to relax after being rattled by a series of loud explosions that rocked the boat a few minutes earlier. He thought the generator was backfiring. It turns out it was just the DVD player blaring the final shootout scene from L.A. Confidential.

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