Chilling in the Maldives

Landed in the Maldives on Thursday. Nice to swap winter for 28C water and palm trees. Bit of pesky weird wind directions to start with, but more than happy to grab a few waves - albeit not perfect perfection quite yet. 

Hard to bemoan chilling on a boat with just the two of you and chugging between tropical islands. Did our usual hightail out of the crowded North Male surf zone. Nothing much appealing about having to share waves with frothing Brazzo's, crazed Israelis and clueless Euro's. Nup, much rather spend a few days on the boat heading out into the far quieter central atolls. My idea of the perfect surf trip is to surf with less people than I do at home.

Just waiting for the reel to scream...

The weird winds have also seemed to scare the fish away, so at this stage it's fish 1, us 0. Despite a fresh new Shimano 30 just waiting for something to tug on it's line and pop it's cherry. I reckon we have enough fishing tackle with us to start a small fishing shop. I  stopped counting at 40 rapala's and about 10 squid, and countless other small lures and jigs. Let's just say there isn't much space for clothes in the luggage bag...

Gotto love the 21st century. Sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and still managed to find an internet site broadcasting the Super 15 rugby. Settled in to watch the Kings vs Bulls game...and then promptly wished we hadn't found the website! Gored by the Bulls. Eish. 

Check out wiziwig.tv if you need to watch rugger (or any other live sport) when you don't have access to TV. Best of all...it's free.

We always travel on the same boat, and have become good mates with the crew over the years. This year we decided to get them into the water a bit to share in the stoke that is surfing. Popped a new bodyboard into the boardbag, and brought it over for them. Waited til it got fairly small this arvo to get them out on it. No good trying to drown the captain or the chef at the start of the trip! They had a blast, and are now fully fledged surf rats.

Chef Areef makes a mean lasagna...and can also boogie pretty good too

Tomorrow we head off to a seldom surfed spot that requires a pretty rare set of wind/swell combinations to light up, and it looks like we might just be in some luck. Only challenge is it's a left, and I have a pretty horrendous backhand thanks to surfing right points all my life. It's known to throw up some picture perfect barrels on it's day....so not only will I be going the wrong way, I have a sneaking feeling I might have to avoid face-planting into the reef on my barrel avoidance maneuvers. Pig-dog into eat-shit in quick succession! Let's wait and see....

Heading here tomorrow

Every sunrise and sunset over here is pretty much A-grade