In the fall of 1994 I had quite a proposal on my hands. Jon Roseman, the co-owner of Tavarua Island Resort had asked me to come down to Fiji to be one of his boatman. This kind of offer doesn't come along very often, if ever. It was a dream I had ever since I started surfing. Seriously, how many people get to work on an island in the South Pacific thats holding two of the worlds best waves? The answer was me, all I had to do was get there.
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| Tavarua, Fiji |
Jon had been coming into the surf shop I was working at for many years, he and the owner were good friends and I got to know him during his visits to the store. To this day I am not sure why Jon asked me to make the trip down, but it was an honor to say the least. Over the next few months I kicked around the idea but the reality was I didn't think I could make it. I had a job, a car payment, a girlfriend...I needed to be here because all that is was important wasn't it? Wasn't it??
Luckily Steve Baker, a veteran boatman, came into the shop one day and explained how I was blowing it if I didn't go and that this was a very special opportunity. The words he uttered were: "Tavarua will change your life."
Little did I know how real those words would eventually ring true. I called Jon soon after Baker talked sense into me and asked if the offer was still on the table and if so, I was down. I'm glad I did go because in the years that followed, I had quit that job, sold that car and that girlfriend? Well she became an ex-wife. Time reveals many things to a person but one thing you should always remember is that we only have one go around. Live life while you can and chase your dreams.
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| Tavarua Boatmen 1995- Ken Lewis, Steven Baker, Terry Stewart and Jon Roseman |
The planning was on and towards the end of the year I quit my job at the surf shop and began working at Rusty Surfboards. The trip was still scheduled for January 95' and the GM at Rustys was cool with me taking a few months off to go on my dream trip. Rusty was stoked I was going as well and when I asked for him to make me a few boards for the trip. I mean who better than one of the worlds great shapers who had surfed Tavarua for over a decade at that point. As the date of my trip got closer I had a beautiful quiver of brand new boards in my living room. The boards were a 6'4" diamond tail, 6'8" Rounded Pin, twin 6'10" step ups and mini guns of 7'0", 7'2" and 7'6".
I was ready.
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| The Boatman Bure circa 1995 with my broken 6'10" |
On a sad side note, one morning while having coffee before my departure a woman saw my Tavarua hat and asked if I had been there. I replied no, but that I was leaving very soon to go to the island and couldn't wait. She then asked If I knew her brother, David Anderson? Indeed I did, DA was a super cool guy from Windansea who I looked up to and respected. I would talk with him at the surf shop often and was really excited because he was a boatman as well, and I was was going to show me the ropes along with Baker. She then had a very serious look in her face and quietly told me that David didn't come home the night before after spearfishing. This caught me very off-guard to say the least. The guy was an incredible waterman. Apparently he went free-diving and that was the last time anyone had seen him. During the days that followed, we all received the horrible news that he had experienced what is called"shallow water blackout," and had drowned. They found his body on the ocean floor, spear gun still in hand and a 45 lb. white sea bass at the end of his spear. Weeks later when I got to the Island, everyone was still crushed by the loss of D.A. and in the boatman bure, his boards were in the corner still waiting for his return. He is very much missed to this day.
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| The Late David Anderson |
January arrived and I said goodbye to my friends as I loaded up my huge board bags stuffed to the gills. In the bags were my boards, pillows for the resort, and porn mags for the boatmen. Here I was in LAX on New Years Eve getting ready to jump on an Air Pacific flight that would change my life. The flight is a 13 hour mission on a once a week flight which, back then, could get quite crowded. But tonight was New Years Eve and the plane was more than half empty. Happiness is a whole row to yourself on a long flight.
Eventually I arrived in Nadi, the main city on the island of Viti Levu. Stepping off the plane and hitting a wall of humidity took my breath away for a moment. I was met by the Island shuttle driver, Sayid, and was soon taken to the Island boat launch. the ride down the bumpy dirt road that ended at a rocky beach surround by mangroves was beautiful. We loaded the gear and a small group of guests onto a panga and began the slow 10 minute commute to the most beautiful island you could imagine. Straight up Gilligan's Island type stuff.
As we were pulling up I saw my friend Roseman on the beach loading up a panga in a hurry. I yelled hello to him and he asked If I wanted to jump in and go for a surf. I hadn't been in the water in almost a month as I had been working my ass off to get things into storage and earn enough money to make my payments while I was gone. Hell yeah I wanted to go surf!
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| Isei at the boat launch |
I asked what board I should bring and he said 6'10" would be good. 6'10"? How big was it out there? I had been riding a 6'4" and that handled some decent waves back home. I grabbed the 6'10" and a 7'0" just in case. As we get into the deep channel between Cloudbreak and Tavarua we a boat full of guests heading back to the island after their morning surf.
Baker was the boatman on that one and he shot me a huge smile, stoked that I made it. Only one guest made the transfer to our boat, Henry Hunte from La Jolla. He was is an incredible surfer and was more than happy to head back out for more. As we made our way towards Cloudbreak, Henry mentioned that it was really fun, 4'-6' but that the wind is starting to come up a bit. His 4-6 was obviously different than mine when I caught my first glimpse of firing Cloudbreak.
Once in the channel my jaw dropped at the sight of the first set. The wave starts way up the point, looking like a very long closeout until it gets towards the end of the atoll where it hits a ledge area. the wave slows enough to let you get in before it continues down the point. Having surfed Hawaii a few times, I compare it to hoping into a really long wave at Log Cabins or Pipeline. Upon paddling out, my heart was beating through my chest. My first sight of someone riding a wave was Roseman dragging both arms and side-slipping into a double overhead barrel. That image is burned into my brain.
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| Jon Roseman might be the most tubed man ever. |
My first wave at Cloudbreak was a revelation. I dropped in, soul arched at the bottom, mostly because I was off balance, and pulled into an overhead barrel, flying out at mach speed. I was from Pacific Beach, a very mediocre beach break, so that wasn't an everyday experience for me. After riding it a bit to long, I kicked out just in time to see Jon in a huge barrel... out farther and to the right of me. What does that mean? It means I was caught inside at a reef aptly named "shish-kabobs."
For my ignorance, I tried to push under a eight-foot ball of white water but it was only two feet deep over razor sharp reef and my board hit and I was still above water as I got smashed.
Welcome to Fiji asshole.
The beating was solid and I got washed further in, this is affectionately known as "Taking the tour." One thing I didn't expect from the waves in Fiji was the power they held. Somehow in my young, inexperienced mind, I thought it was going to be a "softer" wave. How wrong I was. I got some more fun waves that session and went back to the island a happy man. I was thinking about how my buddies were scrapping at three-foot Crystal pier and I had just surfed a wave I've dreamed about for years with only two friends.
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| Me at small fun Cloudbreak 2008 |
Over the course of the next two months I got so see some amazing things and I will tell those stories at a later time. Also in the course of those two months, I got the flu three times from visiting guests and became very ill. During those times, the guys would take the boats out and I would have to stay in bed. Back then the island was very different. No AC, one community bathroom and rain water was collected for drinking and outdoor showers. It was very basic compared to the resort that is there today. If I was feeling better that day, I would clean up the bure as it was always messy.
The old boatman bure was located back by the board graveyard where it was over gown and filled with rats. If they got into our bure, I would sweep up their poop and sometimes watched as the island cats, Bob and Ginger, chased them down and gobbled them whole. That was gnarly to see for sure. One afternoon as I was coming back in from an afternoon surf at Cloudbreak, I felt like my head was going to implode. I moored the boat in the channel and as soon as I got to the beach, the pain became worse.
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| Ding repair on the boats |
I went to the restaurant and chugged a bunch of water and immediately vomited. I found Jon in his office and told him how I was feeling. He said that it might be heat stroke and that I should rest in the office as it was the only AC on the island. I layed down but the pain persisted as I took some aspirin and drank more water. The vomiting continued. Jon arranged for a boat to take me to the mainland for the night so I could rest at a local hotel. He thought that having some cool AC all night might help.
As they dropped me off at the boat launch I remember seeing heat trails...I was starting to hallucinate. At this point I blacked out. Later I heard that the Fijians thought I was drunk because I was making no sense and was throwing up. Soon after I got in the shuttle headed for the hotel, I guess I passed out. Upon arriving I tried to fight the driver and fell out of the cab and passed out once again...I was out of it. The staff, still thinking I was drunk, put me into a room and left me alone.
What nobody knew was that I was in the middle of a 105 degree unchecked fever induced by a viral infection that was threatening my life. If Jon hadn't called to check on me a little bit later that night, I would have died alone in that room.
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| Driving the Panga back from Cloudbreak |
Roseman called my room but there was no answer. He soon called the island shuttle driver Sayid and asked him to check on me. After he knocked and received no answer, he had the staff open the room. Sayid called Jon and gave me the phone. They later said that I didn't know who Jon was or what he was talking about.
Thats when Jon knew something was very wrong and called a doctor right away. He also sent his fiance', Cynthia, to come check on me. They arrived about an hour later as my fever was still peaking at almost 106 degrees. The Doctor gave me a shot in my ass and Cynthia placed cool towels on me and iced me down all night. They literally saved my life.
The next day I awoke and had no idea where I was or what had happened. Jon called his father who was a doctor at Scripps in La Jolla and told him what the symptoms were. The consensus was possible dengue fever. His dad said I should return home ASAP. I returned to the Island thinking whatever I had the night before was over but hat night the headache returned and Jon made arrangements to send me home the next day.
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| The night before I had to fly home |
Fijian hospitals were very primitive back then, and Jon's father knew they wouldn't be able to treat me properly. The next morning I was on a Quantas flight bound for LAX with specific directions to not let anyone know I was ill or they may not let me fly. It was the longest, shittiest 14 hours of my life. No pain killers would work and my brain felt like it was exploding. My mother met me at the airport and drove me straight to the hospital in La Jolla. After a spinal tap and a CAT scan I was placed on morphine and was posted up in bed where I remained for the next week. I was in and out of consciousness and was very light sensitive, so the room had to be completely dark. During those days, I experienced hallucinations of bums with shopping carts in my room that I would have conversations with. I remember hearing Hall n' Oats on their radio. It was so real and so awful.
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| Parasitic Meningitis takes it toll. |
The Morphine and Demerol helped ease the pain but left me blacked out and which I would only emerge from when the pain returned. I went from surfing as good as I ever had, to being bed ridden in a drugged out haze. The Dr. explained that what I caught was parasitic-meningitis. Apparently what happens is these microscopic parasites got into my system when I was sweeping the rat shit out of the bure. The parasites were in the droppings and went airborne. I had breathed them in and since my immune system was weakened by me being sick for so long, it allowed the parasites to take hold.
The pain in my head was caused by my brain being pressed into the topside of my skull. The parasites were in my spinal fluid and the white blood cells were flocking to fight the infection, this had the effect adding a rock into a glass of water. It makes the water rise. There is no cure for this but the parasites cannot live in people very long and I just had to wait until they died. There was talk that I may have gotten this from eating some power bars that were gnawed on by the rats but that was false. The Dr. said there was no way to get the meningitis in that way.
Weeks later when I could get out of bed I had lost 25 pounds but was thankful to alive. Looking back on this incident I realized that the trip to Tavarua was indeed life changing. My world opened up and I experienced a once in a lifetime opportunity. That was the good side...the bad side was after I returned, I went on disability and went through a very depressing period. I couldn't surf because of my back and I couldn't get a job because I was so fatigued. I felt like I needed to reassess many things in my life at this point and eventually settled for a job in a skate shop. Basically I started over.
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| Back in Tavy in 2008 with Chief Druku. |
I finally got to return to Tavarua in 2008, thirteen years after my first trip. It was one of the most healing and cleansing things I have ever experienced. Just coming back to a place that I didn't get to properly say goodbye to was very powerful. Once again I reassessed my life and found that I was unhappy with where I was at, and made changes when I returned home from my trip. What is truly special, is seeing the wonderful friends who still work there. They are the most beautiful people I have ever met and they restore my faith in humanity. It was a true gift to go back. My life path changed after my first trip and in a weird way, it was all meant to be. Sometimes the things in life that seem the worst often reveal new paths that are for the best.
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| Eddie, Siti, Isei and Wonga. My Fijian brothers. |
