An Anonymous Paradise

Hunting Waves on the Outskirts of Indonesia

While contest surfers get the glitzy trophies,
the photo ops with super models and the oversized checks covered
with zeros, there are those wave riders—with world-class skills and
world-beating daydreams—who leave behind the traditional path of
professional surfing and light out for the territory ahead. Armed
with maps of third world countries, stamp-filled passports and
beefy first aid kits, they pack their bags and fly half way around
the world in search of dream waves—the type of hollow, grinding
fantasy barrels that you used to draw in your notebook during high
school math class.

While pay checks do occasionally find their way into the pockets
of these modern day Marco Polos, at the end of the day it is the
reward of risk-filled adventure and never-before surfed,
picture-perfect empty waves that spur these young travelers on.
Their stories are the stuff of underground legend, parking lot
storytelling sessions and the occasional surf magazine feature.
However, tonight, February 1 at the Arlington Theatre, the Santa
Barbara International Film Festival is offering up the world
premier of
The Forgotten Coast—the awe-inspiring tale of a few of
these brave souls and their late May sojourn into the outer isles
of Indonesia.

“It was more a feral mission than an organized surf trip,”
explained the film’s director Justin LePera earlier this week. A
Colorado native but current Southern California resident, The
Forgotten Coast is LePera’s first surf film and—as anybody who
has ever stepped off the well-beaten tourist routes of the South
Pacific and ventured out on his or her own knows—the young movie
maker picked quite a bold and challenging location for his first
attempt. However, as inexperienced in the surf film industry as
LePera may have been, the surfers he traveled with last spring were
about as well-versed in Indonesian travel as any in the business.
With the likes of Kerouac-esque big wave charger Brian Conley,
Huntington Beach legends and de-facto Indo residents Travis Potter
and Micah Byrne, and Australian ripper Daniel Thompson on board,
the crew had more than their fair share of experience. As LePera
put it, “It’s absolutely amazing what these guys are willing and
able to go through to get waves.”

Described by the director as being “more about the struggle to
find waves” than the actual reward, The Forgotten Coast
details a 20-day tour through the outer islands near Sumatra to a
place that no one in the crew—not even the hired Indonesian boat
drivers—had ever been to before. Through monsoon rains, sleepless
nights packed into a modest 30-foot fishing boat, far flung
villages, dry reef tube rides and a broken vertebrae for Thompson,
the crew soldiers on, cameras rolling the entire time. Hinting at
the treasures they caught on film and with a sly grin on his face,
LaPera practically whispered to me in the bustling lobby of the
Hotel Santa Barbara, “We got a point where the swell just kept
coming—straight open ocean swells from the roaring 40’s—and we just
couldn’t leave. The guys just kept paddling back out each
morning…You know, just perfect incredible waves.” And tonight, for
the first time on big screen, those treasures will be laid bare for
all to see.