Media Boat n° 2  finally reached the line up and the first round got under way. The conditions were clean with decent but fairly inconsistent 4' waves.   While shooting the first three rounds I started to make some calls to organise the trip and to plan a discreet exit from the event area.
In May the south island of Tahiti becomes a little like the north shore of Oahu in December.  Boats, dinghies and jet-skis full of surfers, photographers, cameramen and journalists roam every pass in search of the best waves, good pictures and a story.  Nothing happens around Teahupoo without its being filmed or photographed. However when the first round of the WCT event starts all the attention is focused on one single wave: Teahupoo.  However, unknown to the Teahupoo crowds, a handful of people were going to shift their attention to another gem of the South Pacific.

The wave Kelly was hoping for is a special wave, a wave rarely documented and this Island best-kept secret.  It is probably the best right-hander in the world when it's on, but so fickle that it seldom breaks.  Malik Joyeux and French charger Benjamin Sanchis stumbled upon this wave a few years ago.  It was 10 to 12 feet with perfect bowls lining up for ever.  After this epic tow-in session Malik, ecstatic, called Kelly on his cell phone in Australia.  Kelly still recalls the conversation.  " I have just surfed the best waves of my life," Malik said.  "It's  a right-hander, with a lip as thick as Teahupoo but much longer.  You can get twenty-second barrels and it's in French Polynesia! "

Later on Kelly saw some footage of that memorable session which had been shot from a rock on the reef and it sure stuck in his mind.   He had also had a glimpse of the wave back in '98 and had been waiting for it ever since. Locals like Hector Krauser, Thierry Domenech, Aken or Jody monitor the place religiously. They have managed to score rare sessions over the years. The slightest shift in wind degree or swell direction and the wave simply shuts down.  It's so fickle that I have shot the place only four times in the last twelve years.

However today I could tell by the conditions as I sat out on the boat at Teahupoo that Malik's Point would be going off.  The swell was missing the wave at the end of the road and was heading straight to the coast of this Island.  If I wanted this trip to happen we had to move fast and with a small, tight crew.  I called Manoa Drollet and gave him the run down. He was supposed to be driving a jet-ski all day, as he was on water patrol duty for the event, but soon found himself negotiating a day off for "exceptional circumstances".  Viri, the water-patrol boss for the event, fortunately agreed to let him go!   We agreed to meet up at a marina close to the wave around 1 o'clock.  He was going to fly over and hook up with Hector in case we needed a jet-ski. 

I knew Benjamin Sanchis would be on stand-by as we had been checking the maps together for the last week.  Last winter he had finished second at the XXL awards for riding a 50 foot wave at Belharra in France and he had now been in Tahiti for a couple of months.   Benjamin is obsessed with "The Point"  and has been ever since he scored a couple of great sessions with Malik and Manoa a few years back.  He also flew to the Island early that morning and started to give me reports on the wind and swell direction. Things were looking good.   All I needed now was to grab videographer Nicolas 'Daz'  Dazet from the Quiksilver Europe Boat anchored in the channel behind me and get to shore.  He too had spent the last hour organizing a replacement and locating a new collection board-short which Kelly was to wear during the shoot. 

Teiva Joyeux was on another boat behind me with Michel Bourez.   He was caddying for Dean Morrison.  He knew about our plan and was waiting for my call.  As soon as the heat finished,  he zoomed in to pick me up with his jet-ski while his mate Matthieu picked up Daz with another ski.  They dropped us off at the marina.
 
We drove to a house at the end of the road in search of the board short for Kelly.   Daz found it on a bag waiting for him and we set off for Taapuna.   We stopped by the house to pick up what we needed for an indefinite stay and again by the Sapinus wave to pick up an extra 6'6  for Benjamin.  We were on schedule.  

Arrived there, the horizon seemed as if it was about to be totally engulfed by a massive, dark storm.   At this stage we all looked at each other and wondered if we weren't going to get skunked.  Meanwhile, Gilles, a local television cameraman, was the only one to have understood why I had left the event. He called me from Media Boat n° 1 and gave me a report from the contest.   Conditions were good and Heiarii Williams has just got through his heat.

As we approached the coast we could see the wave peeling from behind, but we decided to rush into the bay for cover as the pitch-black clouds above our heads finally burst and the rain came pelting down.  At the dock Manoa and Benjamin were waiting for us alongside local surfer and former world champion jet-ski pilot Hector Krauzer.  Angelo, a videographer from L.A.,  was filming Manoa's every move.  He had been following him around for the last ten days doing a sequence for a reality tv show based on the lifestyle of famous surfers.
 
Manoa, Benjamin and Angelo hopped on the fishing boat while Hector picked up his jetski. We headed straight to the bend in the reef we call  "The Point".  The wave was on fire.  Up the reef the sets had started to hit the shelf and were creating perfect barrels that were peeling through into the bend.  As the wave ran down the reef, it actually grew in size and the lip started to go horizontal.  Within seconds, Manoa and Sancho were in the water paddling into sheer perfection.

It was time to call Kelly.  "It's 5 to 6 ft with 8+ ft sets, absolutely perfect," we told him.  He was just finishing a meal with his girlfriend and said that I could pick him up with the boat at his hotel directly from his over-water bungalow. "It's the furthest one out on the lagoon, you can't miss it,"  he said.  I told Angelo that we had an extra surfer to pick up.  Little did he know we were picking up the best guest star he could have dreamed of for his show.   Stergio drove back through the pass and headed towards the hotel.  We were busy dodging a few coral heads when we saw bright white boards being stacked onto the deck of a bungalow.  Kelly appeared with a sparkle in his eye.  He had been waiting a long time for this wave and today was the day.  He did it in style, jumping on the ride from the deck of his luxury over-water bungalow!  He had the last and most expensive room available but it also had a unique view of the end of the wave.  While we headed out, Daz showed Kelly the replay of Manoa's and Benjamin's best waves.   Excitement lit up his face.

Kelly prepared his self-shaped 5'10 and jumped into the water around the end section.  While he moved up to the peak, Benjamin paddled into a bomb and stood tall in the pit, right in front of Kelly.  On the wave behind, Manoa got an even deeper ride and Kelly got to see Manoa up close, throwing two shakas in the tube as he pushed through the face for his first duck dive.   Hector, Aken and Jody had joined the crew in the line up.   Kelly caught a few medium waves at The Point but suddenly the wind switched a couple of degrees to the north and the whole line-up changed.  The sets stopped.  The barrels started to pinch, the perfect freight train became a sectionned, bumpy, dangerous reef wave.  It was getting messy.  We saw Kelly take off and fall directly into a hole up the point.  On another wave, chandeliers of white water started falling around him and the face of the wave became a war zone.  He finished the wave in the tube on just his front foot, leaning foward like a ballerina, just for a few seconds before wiping out.  Jody took a nasty fall and ended up with reef cuts all over his back.

Manoa came straight back on the boat as soon as the conditions switched.  Kelly and Sancho stayed out a little longer but soon decided to come back as well.  We waited for the wind to turn offshore again or glass off.  Kelly couldn't come this close and not see the magic of this wave.  We waited for over an hour and suddenly the wind clicked back to the right direction and slowly died off as the sun started to set through the clouds.  Within minutes the line-up was transformed.  The wave became a subtle mix of various world-class waves.  When the sets rolled in, the second section of the wave seemed to double up like a Lances Right bomb.  The take-off area at the point is right on the reef.  It has the shape of a Rags right with the speed of Maalaea Harbor!  Once the wave has cleared the point and bent around the reef, it starts to grow, creating long bowl sections that keep connecting. The bigger it is, the better they connect.
 
For the next hour, until dark, the show was breathtaking.  A couple of boats coming back from fishing trips stopped to look at the action.  The sets just kept rolling in and Kelly was finally enjoying the wave in its full glory, standing tall in the barrel, up the point, then pumping hard to reach the next section for another one.  The wave is actually hard to shoot as it is so long.  You have to choose a section of the wave near the middle.  Sometimes the surfers would kick out close to the boat, but on the big sets they would keep on going and we would hear them yell from behind.  The longer the wave, the better it gets.  The barrels grew wider, slowed down slightly as the lip launched onto a near-dry reef.  But the end section was too sketchy to shoot from a boat.  A set wave could trap you with no escape.  Taking the first wave of the set was challenging.  When they kicked out or punched through the face at the end of the wave, they would find themselves very close to the reef with a wall of water from the second wave in front of them.  All the surfers made a trip or two to the lagoon during the session.  Kelly even thought about surfing with no leash at one stage.  On one occasion, getting caught inside on a set, he actually turned his board over at the last minute to avoid injury going over the reef.  Hector and Aken picked him up in the lagoon with the jetski and took him straight back out.  It was mind-blowing how Kelly managed to go through the whole session without a cut on his body.   We witnessed some horrendous wipe-outs and many times the whole boat would cringe in horror.  Benjamin was an animal that day.  His leash snapped twice and he had to get his board back from the lagoon.  He was so amped that the second time, too impatient to wait for the jetski, he grabbed my fins and went over the reef braving the dreaded end section, going in and back.  Another time I saw him get caught inside.  He dived under two sets with waves exploding on the reef.  I still wonder how he managed to find enough water beneath those waves to actually get under them.  From behind it seemed as if the whole lip would be bounced back towards the sky through the back of the wave and white water curtains were exploding vertically like a fireworks display.

Manoa as usual was making it look all too easy and he was just too happy to be pulling in front side for once.  Sometimes while he was paddling back as a set rolled in, he would drop directly into the wave from the second section and get pitted so deep he would yell all the way past the boat.  He also took a few trips to the reef and finished the day with multiple little cuts all over his legs but miraculously nothing serious.  Hector and Aken both scored ridiculously long tubes, their local knowledge paying off on such a tricky wave.  It was great to see the smiles on their faces as they shared their wave with Kelly Slater.  It was their own private session.  My only regret was for the other great local regular foot tube specialists held back at the Teahupoo event:   Veterans Arsene Harehoe, Thierry Domenech and Vetea David, all on jetski water patrol duty, and of course WCT newcomer Michel Bourez.
 
The last half hour was magical. The sets became more consistent and the line up became sheet glass. One of Kelly's last waves was the kind of wave that you remember for ever. The ultimate surfing show.  A world-class right-hander with the best surfer on the planet performing at his best in front of a handful of people, at the exact time when millions of viewers were following the live streaming of the Teahupoo Pro.

The boat headed back into the lagoon at dark.  Kelly was going over his last rides with Manoa and Sancho cracking up. The atmosphere was electric.  Angelo and Daz were soaking it all up.  Everybody realized that something special had just happened.  It was a very emotional day for all of us. Memories of Malik's smile and enthusiasm about the place were on everybody's mind.  We decided to stay the night as the next morning could be promising.  Stergio dropped off all our gear onto the pontoon .  Unfortunately it was Saturday night on a long week-end and Kelly had taken the last room available this side of the island.  We were stranded in a luxury hotel with all our gear spread out close to the bar!   We decided to indulge in the buffet and assess the situation later.  Manoa meanwhile went to smooth talk the receptionist and by the end of the meal we had our two rooms.

Kelly's prediction turned out to be correct - the next two days of the Billabong Pro were called off.  We scored a few more waves at Malik's Point the next morning, but the wind soon picked up and the swell dropped.It was time to go to the Island other right-hander. The conditions were perfect for the wave just around the corner.  Jeremy Flores and Miky Picon came over for the day and joined the crew scoring great 4 to 6 foot tube sessions.  This wave is very much like its bigger sister around the corner.  Two to three 'Backdoor'-looking bowls lining up perfectly one after the other.  Jeremy pulled off a couple of amazing double-barrel rides.

The next day the swell had dropped even more, so Manoa and Kelly decided to do 18 holes at the brand-new golf course near by.   It was then time for everyone to head back to the end of the road on the island of Tahiti and immerse themselves once more in the scene at the Teahupoo Pro.
 
Memories of the sessions would linger on during the week and would soon become the talk of the town.  It seemed as though Malik had organised a little private session for his mates on his other favorite wave.  All his friends and family had been instrumental in some way during the trip.  Kelly was not indifferent to this. On the Sunday morning, he turned up at breakfast with the classic T-shirt that Teiva Joyeux had designed with the famous lizard tattoo design on the back and 'In memory of Malik Joyeux' on the front.  We all shared this special moment.  It sure made us feel good.  Malik would have smiled.