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Outside magazine, June 2001 Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Shane Beschen scoping a break.
ON THE DECK of the Nusa Dewata, Rochelle Ballard finishes her daily yoga routine and makes her way to the hatch. "'Scuse me, darling," she says to Serena Brooke, who's waxing her board alongside cherub-faced Megan Abubo. None of the three women—Abubo, Brooke, or Ballard—is favored to win. Odds are on 31-year-old Layne Beachley, winner of the World Championship Tour for two years running. Once nicknamed Gidget, she's now called Beast. Beachley, who's listening to techno music on her MiniDisc player, removes her headphones for a moment. Picking up Ballard's energy drink, a yellowish Powerade, she cries, "Who peed in your bottle?"

It's the fourth day in the Mentawais, and the competition has yet to begin. Everywhere the fleet has gone, the surf has been adequate, but not towering. Today, at long last, satellite forecasts indicate an oncoming swell. Competition will begin tomorrow, but you wouldn't guess it aboard the Nusa Dewata. The girls, as everyone calls the female pros, appear as antagonistic as friends at a slumber party. They tell serial bedtime stories. They share pineapple slices, nail polish, and an astonishing array of personal-care emollients. They giggle a lot.

Whither the dissonance, the roiling cauldron of tension and claustrophobia stoked by the competitive fire of mighty surf warriors?

Not on the Mangalui. The men are just returning from a euphoric "expression session" in the best practice waves yet. They grab icy cans of Bintang from a giant cooler and change into dry board shorts. Andy and Bruce Irons start a game of backgammon. Two others vanish behind closed doors to smoke a joint. Sunny Garcia, in search of a little decompression-time reading material, reaches over both Time and Playboy to pick up a copy of Surfer. The conversation takes a brief detour involving the IRS, accountants, and agents, and then quickly returns to surfing.

The men, ashamed of their petulant demand to switch boats, have since apologized and are settling into the ease of their Indian Ocean boondoggle. Only Garcia, who's 31 and ranked number one on the WCT tour, seizes the rich mind-game opportunities afforded by the close quarters of the flotilla. "Picking the bunks was interesting," says George. "Sunny basically told us where we were going to sleep, and we obeyed." When others begin praising the Boat Trip Challenge as a floating party, Garcia responds, "Bring your combat boots—we ain't here to dance." His favorite target is 23-year-old Timmy Curran, a quiet, devout Christian consistently ranked in the top ten. Garcia taunts him with singsong chants of "Tim-EEEE!" and steals food off his plate. Curran just turns the other cheek (the face kind). "At a normal contest, you surf your heat and then leave," he says somewhat morosely. "Here, you're always around."

It's a living. Shortly before sitting down to a dinner of grilled wahoo with lime and dill, the guys assemble on deck to watch the sun descend behind a palm-fringed isle, the underbellies of puffy cumulus clouds streaked with shades of crimson, lavender, and orange. Expressing the moment's reverence as only a surfer can, Andy Irons gushes, "The whole sky is mental."

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