When two old friends set off to traverse the Society Islands on stand-up surfboards, they splash up against luxury resorts, tropical beauties, and every other imaginable South Pacific allure. Sometimes there's no shame in abandoning ship.
The author (left) and Ed McCall paddling out to sea off the coast of Tahaa
The lagoon at the St. Regis Bora-Bora Resort
Problem is, no maritime maps of this island exist, so the 77-foot private yacht we’ve called home for the past couple of days, the Roa, must dock a mile offshore to avoid the risk of running aground. We’ll have to stand-up paddlesurf from here, but without coordinates or a local to guide us through Tupai’s crown of thorny shallow reefs, that will be tricky.
Though we had come to Tahiti seeking adventure, our quest thus far amounted to little more than idle recreation. Our mission was to stand-up paddlesurf from Tahiti’s southern tip to the northern extreme of the Society Islands, a journey of some 190 miles involving several treacherous open-water crossings. Thanks to deft planning and the islands’ largesse, our expedition morphed into a voyage of rather milder adventure (we’d fly over the open water) and extreme hedonism (staying each night at the world’s finest tropical resorts). Like Paul Gauguin (who took a 14-year-old Tahitian mistress) and Marlon Brando (who married a Tahitian and bought his own atoll) had before us, we were succumbing to sin, pulchritude, and the islands’ sensual charms. So as the days floated by and the indulgences amassed, we decided we needed to atone for our extravagance. We vowed—by God!—to redeem ourselves by becoming the first to completely circumnavigate Bora-Bora on stand-up surfboards. It was a feat of empty grandiosity, perhaps, but a feat all the same.
For Ed McCall, a 41-year-old private-equity virtuoso, the trip would be a washout without such an exploit. On paper, Ed is one of those guys you’d love to hate: Stanford graduate, Goldman Sachs pedigree, seven-figure income, with Lance Armstrong as a pal and a half-dozen eager girlfriends on speed dial. (After I dined with him recently in Venice Beach, he went home with a leggy Lithuanian and woke up with his yoga teacher.) But you can’t hate him. In an industry ruled by pencil-neck Ivy Leaguers, Ed is the son of working-class parents who favors surfing shorts over Armani suits. Last year, he showed up in the office a grand total of 40 days, and he’ll readily admit, in his loping, long-armed, self-deprecating way, that work is merely a way to fund his play habits. He achieves not because of greed or ego, but rather an impulse akin to the insoluble determination of a black Lab that joyfully retrieves a tennis ball no matter how far thrown or how thick the bush. Tahiti would be fun, but Ed required the Bora-Bora caper—his tennis ball to bring back home.
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French Polynesia consists of five archipelagos scattered across some two million square miles of the South Pacific. The Society Islands, which include Tahiti, Bora-Bora, Raiatea, Tahaa, and Tupai, are the westernmost group. Air Tahiti Nui...
“You’ll never make it,” our captain calls after us, pointing to the churning surf blocking the channel to the lagoon.
Spurning wisdom, we paddle incautiously toward shore. From a distance, the breaking waves look totally surfable. But as we approach land, we can see the waves crashing mere inches above razorlike coral with a ferocity that suggests the slashing of flesh.
“I guess the captain was right,” I shout to Ed, who I assume also recognizes the insanity of going farther. I’m wrong.
Ed is suddenly up on a wave, maneuvering his eight-foot carbon-fiber paddle in a fluid J-stroke while stepping back on the board to stay on the wave’s crest. A moment later, the surf delivers him elegantly into the channel leading to the lagoon. He raises his paddle victoriously overhead and beckons me to follow.
I’m hardly Ed’s equal on a stand-up surfboard, but with the trail blazed, I manage to catch the next wave and bobble my way over the reef. Reunited, Ed and I paddle into Tupai’s lagoon, where we discover a secluded aquatic garden alive with stingrays, giant crabs, and baby hammerhead sharks. More Tahitian excess—for now.
Floating to the lobby at the InterContinental Bora-Bora
Wearing gold chains and a backwards baseball cap, Raimana greeted us at his bougainvillea-fringed beach house, sliding open a door to a simple, spotlessly clean, teak-floor home. His eight-year-old daughter napped serenely on a cushion off to one side; Yvanne, his wife, with a tiare flower behind her ear, watered plants outside.
“Is that your son?” I asked, pointing at the black-haired, blue-eyed kid waxing boards in the front yard.
“No, he’s from the village,” Raimana replied. “He’s very poor. His parents don’t care about him, so he lives with me now.”
“Didn’t you have to adopt him?”
“No, we Tahitians have always looked at each other, the land, and everything on it as part of the community. We never even had fences or door locks until about ten years ago.”
Indeed, stepping onto the front deck, which overlooks the sea, we nearly collided with racks of Raimana’s friends’ surfboards, all unsecured. “Here’s Kelly Slater’s competition board,” he said, plucking out a shortboard. Next, he hoisted a 12-foot, heavily patched stand-up board from the top rack. “And this is Laird Hamilton’s first stand-up board. You’ll use it today,” he informed me. “Laird won’t mind.”
An hour later, out at sea, we anchored a mile offshore. We were surrounded by the world’s top 44 surfers, furtively waiting for Teahupoo’s legendary break. Instead of the volcanic, 25-foot waves that have slammed surfers to their deaths, however, today serene six-footers were breaking in long horizontal crests—ideal conditions for stand-up paddlesurfers. Ed and Raimana, seasoned paddlers, aimed for the surf. I paddled for calmer waters.
The InterContinental Bora-Bora’s bungalows
Now, months later but hardly an expert, I was facing a trans-Tahiti expedition. Moreover, I was riding Laird Hamilton’s board. As I knelt on the board, I could see the master’s footprints worn into the surf wax. I figured all I needed to do was jump into his footprints and paddle.
Not exactly.
Turns out this early prototype was designed for performance, not stability. For three ego-crushing hours, I stood up, wobbled, and fell. When Ed and Raimana paddled up, ebullient from cutting elegant S-turns down the face of perfect waves, I was a waterlogged wreck. “Looks like you’re all ready to make the Bora-Bora circumnavigation,” boomed Ed, towering above me.
That evening, Raimana and his wife took us to the nightly Billabong party on a pier at the edge of town. Here, hip, tattooed surfers and their high-heeled, bikinied support teams mingled seamlessly with laid-back locals and their families. As we sat on the dock in the soft evening sunshine waiting for the band to start, I pressed Raimana about circumnavigating Bora-Bora. What was the best direction? Are there dangerous currents? Sharks?
“Make it easy, brother,” he counseled with a dismissive wave. “If you make it to Bora-Bora, just chill out. You’re going to get there and say, ‘Let’s just stay here.’ ”
“I doubt it,” retorted Ed. “I don’t know how long this rich-boy travel will hold my interest. I need a challenge.”
THERE’S NO EASY WAY TO REACH MOTU TAUTAU, where we began the tour, but therein lies its charm. From Papeete, on Tahiti, we boarded a twin-prop Tahiti Air flight to Raiatea, where two white-clad valets seized our luggage and transferred us to a jet boat for the 35-minute ride to the tiny island on a coral reef. We landed at Le Tahaa Island Resort & Spa, an ultraexclusive Relais & Châteaux resort; Tom Cruise, Eva Longoria, and San Antonio Spurs star Tony Parker had all visited in the previous month. Here, for a mere $1,400 a night, not including food, taxes, and gratuities, paradise was ours, complete with a private spa, French chefs specializing in Asian fusion, and manicured grounds that exuded the serenity of one of those portable Zen gardens you rake for stress relief. At the dock, a gorgeous, high-heeled, miniskirted resort manager greeted us in alluringly French-tinged English, listed available activities (bathe on secluded beaches, snorkel the private shores, spend a day in the spa), and dispatched our luggage to an exquisitely appointed, over-water teak bungalow.Ed was oblivious to it all. His singular focus was the surfboards he’d shipped four weeks earlier. He hurried to enquire at the front desk and was directed to a storeroom, where two prototype C4 Waterman Holoholos (the most advanced lagoon-cruising stand-up boards available) awaited. Somehow, we’d negotiated the morass of Tahitian customs.
We woke the following morning at 5:30 and, from our bungalow, dove into a tepid sea. Our goal was to paddle from Motu Tautau three miles east across a channel to the bigger island of Tahaa. Now, on my new C4 board, I stood up effortlessly and began paddling. No nosedives or logrolling pratfalls. Ed leaned back on his board and pirouetted it 180 degrees. Since the time of Laird’s prototype, engineers, it seems, had cracked the code for developing a board stable enough for neophytes like me yet maneuverable for pros like Ed.
The rising sun glinted on silky blue water as we paddled eastward. Unlike, say, sea kayaking, on a stand-up paddleboard, you’re six feet above the water, which means the marine life emerges: We could see stingrays unburying themselves and fluttering away. I spied sea urchins and blue-lipped oysters and the iridescent blue flecks of tiny fish in the coral heads. To our right, a series of empty, palm-topped motus, or small islands, stretched across the horizon; to our left, Bora-Bora’s tombstone silhouette loomed purple, 12 miles in the distance.
Ed, in his patient, good-natured way, hung back and gave me some pointers. “You want a good reach forward with the blade of the paddle, then uncoil the rotation of your upper torso,” he advised. “That way, you’re engaging bigger muscles.” He let that settle and a few minutes later added, “If you’re just using your arms, you’re going to get tired in a hurry. Keep your core engaged, like when picking something up—no need to pull past your feet, just let the board glide.” Ed stood on his board and demonstrated. With his long, knotted hair, ripped torso, and long paddle, he looked more like venture capital’s answer to Braveheart than an investor. I told him as much.
“I can say, without a doubt, that no one in the private-equity industry looks like me,” he replied, pointing to his hair. “In many cases, I walk into an appointment and the executives I’m supposed to meet think I’m there to water the plants or clean the windows. But I think that gives me an edge. I bring a humanistic approach to a business. At the end of the day, real people want to work with real people.”
Ed has had his share of success. Since he signed up for his day job as partner at Brentwood Associates, he has undertaken a number of lucrative ventures. He bought and sold an educational company that yielded a hundredfold return. When he purchased Bell and Giro Sports and launched lines of ski and snowboard helmets, everyone said he would fail; he sold the company for a nine-figure profit. And he created the Exhale chain of day spas, combining traditional therapeutic spa services with yoga, core fusion, acupuncture, and other alternative wellness services, a concept never before seen in the industry at the time. Tom Wolfe, Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts, and Cheryl Tiegs are just a few of Exhale’s clients.We reached Tahaa and turned to parallel the island, which rose starkly out of the sea, cloaked with thick emerald vegetation. Villages bathed in blue, pink, and yellow pastels dotted the coast. Occasionally, we’d see black-pearl farms offshore, stilted huts surrounded by hundreds of floating oyster nets. Women sat on docks and fished; brown-backed kids frolicked in neatly kept yards that were dotted with banana and avocado trees. At Tapuamu Bay, we turned inward and cruised the far shore. We paddled by a moldy, rust-stained yacht that looked as if it had just surfaced from a very long undersea stay. As we passed, a bald man materialized from below decks. “I found it at the bottom of the sea,” the shirtless Frenchman explained of the boat, wiping off his greasy hands in a rag. “The owners sunk it for insurance purposes. I bought it for $1 and dove down and filled it with air bags to bring it to the surface.”
“How long do you think it will take you to refurbish?” Ed asked, shouting up from his surfboard.
“I don’t know,” the Frenchman answered with a shrug. “Here in Tahaa, time makes no difference.” Then he pointed to the leaden clouds rolling over the island and down into the bay. Rain, like mercury curtains, hung from the sky. “You better find some shelter,” he advised.
Ed and I pivoted our boards and paddled hard. Big, warm drops were slapping at our backs, but our only real worry was lightning. We were, after all, the highest points at sea, especially when we lifted our paddles overhead, crucifix-like, to catch the tailwinds. Between the gusts and the pulsing swells, we were propelled back toward Le Petit Tahaa much faster than even Ed could paddle. Pure magic.
The reception at Le Tahaa Island Resort & Spa
We pedaled through the Polynesian morning, over a perfect ribbon of asphalt. Dale, who possesses incandescent intelligence, the testosterone of a bull elephant, and an unlikely flower fetish (“Whoa—stop. Stop! Flowering ginger! It’s so fucking beautiful.”), led the way. We turned upward on a muddy, rutted, switchbacking two-track through the jungle. The bathwater-warm tropical air clung to us as if we were swathed in Saran Wrap. We could see the occasional pineapple tree in the thick jungle, which spread downward to the sea.
At the summit, we looked out over the panorama: a sapphire bay with cobalt blue holes and verdant mountains sloping upward from the water. Sweating like a chilled martini on a steamy day, I felt some triumph having crested the island. I looked over at Dale to ask how he felt. “Look at those fucking gorgeous hibiscus,” he observed rather than reply. “I swear they grow everywhere on this island.”
FINALLY, IT’S EXPLOIT TIME—circumnavigation time—and Ed and I arrive at the InterContinental Bora-Bora like teenagers ready for prom. At daybreak, we begin the expedition near Matira Point, a few miles south of Bloody Mary’s bar and restaurant. It’s a gray morning, the sea looks like marbled slate, and a crosswind slaps whitecaps against our boards. We start confidently, paddling hard and figuring we’ll be done by noon.
When we round Matira Point, a headwind blasts us. We dig our paddles into the choppy water, rowing ferociously but, judging by the palm-lined shore, making negligible progress. For the next four hours, the adventure becomes an act of Sisyphean futility: We paddle to limb-numbing failure only to have the wind blow us backwards when we pause even briefly. My largely unused lateral leg muscles begin to cramp. Even the bottom of my feet hurt from gripping the board. Ed, seemingly exempt from pain, paddles spunkily ahead.
After a midmorning shower, a rainbow arches over Bora-Bora’s headstone and a ray of sun pierces the clouds, illuminating a seashore hamlet with an incandescent pop. Absorbed, I forget to keep my eye on the sea. My rear fin hits a coral head, stopping my board abruptly. I lurch forward, belly flop into the coral, and shred my thigh. I remount, paddling angrily to try to close the gap to Ed, but my arms are killing me and my leg is bloody. He shrinks to an ever smaller speck on the horizon. We probably still have three miserable hours to go.
Then something strange happens: I begin to gain ground. As Ed comes into view, I realize he’s headed shoreward, several miles from the finish line. When I catch up, he’s pulling his board onto the dock in front of Bloody Mary’s.
“What are you doing!?” I shout.
“I’ve had enough,” he replies brightly. “Let’s go have a beer.”
“What about the almighty loop? We’re not going to finish?”
“Nope.”
Astonished, I clamber out of the water in silence. Not until that evening, bellied up to the hotel’s outdoor bar and three vodka and sodas in, am I finally able to ask the inevitable: “What happened today?”
ACCESS
French Polynesia consists of five archipelagos scattered across some two million square miles of the South Pacific. The Society Islands, which include Tahiti, Bora-Bora, Raiatea, Tahaa, and Tupai, are the westernmost group. Air Tahiti Nui...
Hell no, I think. A week of hedonism, offset by the 50 or so miles I’ve paddled, is accomplishment enough for me. I will return home refreshed from the trip. For Ed, it’s more than fleeting rejuvenation. Four months from now, after another day in capitalism’s gladiator ring, he’ll remember his Tahitian epiphany and take it to heart—by walking into his office and announcing his departure from the company.
But at the moment, nothing—not the jobs back home, the strain in my body from paddling, or even the abortive circumnavigation—really matters. We order another round and lean back against the bar to watch daylight fade into the vast South Pacific. In the quiet of the dissipating island heat, in the company of a close old friend, the vodka tastes especially smooth.
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