Apparently Koester had booked his ticket thirty minutes after his call from Scotty and already had to start travelling five hours later in order to make it to Fiji in time for the first day of the swell – fair play! The young German has proved to the world that he is untouchable in cross-onshore ‘European’ conditions, but as for hard-core, down-the-line wave sailing, there’s still an, arguably harsh, question mark lingering over his ability. Meanwhile, heavy-wave Guru Jason Polakow had clocked the same forecast on his radar and was headed to Fiji independently to catch the same conditions. As for Scotty, he’s pretty much been there, seen it and done it in the search for perfection, but sailing sizeable Cloudbreak was one tick missing on his bucket list and was the instigator of this whole adventure that subsequently drew both Koester and myself into the equation.