My Maldives trip - vid and pics

My two-week Maldives trip is over... Back to reality...

Great surf for most of the time - often head high or bigger. A better surfer would have been barreled many times...

Did my best to keep the vid as short as possible... Pictures below the vid.

[FYI: 85 kegs and 6'3"]

Nice work cSe - looks like you were shredding on all 3 boards. Any startling revelations about any of the boards in certain conditions or was it simply the 8'10 Speeed for when it was a bit messy / the 7'10 Minion for the clean days & your Hokua just to feel at home?

great stuff thanks for sharing

Thanks for that. Really enjoyed it.

I want to go next year and it would be great to hear your experiences.

Thanks for your comments!

The trip was kind of expensive... There are much more economical ways to do it. We booked the 130' MV Carpe Vita via Perfect Wave. http://www.mvcarpevita.com/ The boat cost USD$53,700 for 13 nights which we split 8 ways ($6,650 pp). Plus we paid $350 pp extra for the Dhoni - a 60 foot "tender" that transports you to the waves (alternative is a 15' boat which we also used). The Carpe Vita was capable of sleeping 20 (10 cabins), but we had it all to ourselves. It is normally a dive boat but Perfect Wave charters it at this time of year for surfing. (Fortunately they still had the dive gear and dive master on board so I took 5 dives and became Advanced blah blah certified.) The fee includes all the food and staff, but you pay extra for alcohol.

Therefore we were able to travel all over the central atolls to hunt down the best waves and conditions and also to get some variety.

I was lucky with the reef. There were lots of times when I expected to get cut - lots of times - I was not holding back. But I was lucky; just a couple of scrapes and big bruise on my backside

I used the Naish at the beginning because it was seriously windy and choppy - I needed the 32" width. The Minion was great, but with 7 other people in the water (my group) + up to 8 locals at a couple of places + the other boat(s)/randoms you could not afford to miss waves - it was a long wait until your next attempt (if you play by the rules...). I had a ball on the Minion, but the Sunova gave me a higher probability of getting on the wave, I could get on that little bit earlier, and I really enjoyed the speed - on most of the waves you had to race across the wave to the shoulder or else... They are not cruisy waves.

Here is a little movie that shows where we went and some boat pics below:

The Dhoni and the mothership:

Truely awesome trip. Well done! Would love to do the same with a bunch of mates. One day.....

Wow what an awesome trip. Thanks heaps for sharing all the details. Nice.

Awesome! But, yeah, very expensive. How sweet is that boat/ship?

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SUPunit said..
Thanks cantSUPenough.

Very cool! Those underwater reef shots are awesome.

Keep putting in Gold Lotto YT I'm happy with the bottom bunk down the back.

I will probably be in the bottom bunk down the back next time too!

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HBsups said..
Great vid and looks like an awesome trip. I loved the wipeout around 3.36, but my 5yr old daughter really liked the fish on the reef!
Cheers HB

I should put a vid together of the wipeouts - there were a few... I decided to just go for it - a bit risky with the reef, but it was fun. (The waves were reasonably big and powerful, but not like the Indo trip five years ago - those waves took pleasure in hurting you.) In reality I should have ducked and tried to get barreled. Instead I got smacked in the head and sent flying towards the reef