| Sultans of Surf |
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Page 1 of 7 From building a smarter cell phone to kicking back on a Maldivian surf charter with friends, tech-biz guru Sky Dayton squeezes the most out of the game he calls life 
“Sky should be here. I feel bad he’s missing this,” says Skylar Peak, a Malibu–based event manager, as he chopsticks freshly made rice noodles into his mouth. “But he’s probably making another million dollars right now.”Rare is the global surfer who stops to cut a business deal en route to a week of wave riding in the remote Maldives of the Indian Ocean. But that’s exactly what 36-year-old tech tycoon Sky Dayton does on an eight-hour layover in Singapore. Dayton is traveling with an entourage of good friends, including Peak, that he’s assembled to join him surfing in the Maldives. At the airport, as his buddies set off into the city, they are all talk about the endless swells waiting farther south. They’ll spend the afternoon gorging on barbecued venison, succulent chicken, pyramid-shaped mounds of rice, and bottles of Tiger lager at Boon Tong Kee, one of Singapore’s most legendary lunch parlors. They’ll even get massages. Meanwhile, Dayton peels off in his own chauffeured BMW for his appointment. Cocooned in a windowless conference room high atop the Singapore Telecom Tower, Dayton meets with executives from SingTel, exploring a possible alliance with his new wireless phone-Internet venture, Helio, which competes against Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry. Dayton and his buddies reunite around sunset for the final quick flight from Singapore, and by 10 P.M. they’re boarding the Ocean Dancer, a 110-foot luxury yacht berthed in Male, the capital of the Maldives. They’ll spend the next seven days exploring the surf breaks of this tropical island chain plopped some 350 miles southwest of India. Just minutes after polishing off the piña coladas supplied by the ship’s Maldivian and Indonesian staff, everyone has swapped travel clothes for surf trunks, and Dayton leads the way to the top deck of the three-deck cruiser for a ceremonial plunge into the warm water below. “This is the first thing I do every time I take a trip like this,” Dayton tells me as we climb onto the railing, looking down at the dark sea 30 feet below. This, and broker a major business deal, I think. Then, with a rat-a-tat-tat splash of bodies hitting the water, the surf trip has officially begun. For five out of the last seven years Dayton has traveled to surf the world’s most exotic wave-riding locales, such as Indonesia and Fiji. (Last year’s launch of Helio kept him tied to the desk.) With him come his closest surfing buddies: guys like Chris Masterson, an affable actor with a slight frame, best known for his work on the TV hit Malcolm in the Middle; Eric Balfour, star of an upcoming film with Dennis Hopper called Hell Ride; Kyle Howard, an actor on the popular TBS comedy My Boys; and Peak, one of Dayton’s best friends. |
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