WS – How did this mission come about?
AM – Pedra has always been on my radar since the first guys surfed it. It looked like an amazing wave and I’ve always had a taste for adventure. I’m much more interested in hunting down some empty waves in some far flung location than jumping on a plane to Maui and sailing Ho’okipa with 50 other people.
One day I got a phone call out of the blue from a production house that work with Red Bull. They wanted to make it happen and I said that I was very interested. It was probably about eight or nine months between that initial conversation and actually doing it. I was training really hard to get physically prepared but then I badly injured my foot in February. I couldn’t really walk, let alone windsurf so I was back at square one, which delayed things for a few months. That pushed the whole thing back into the middle of winter, which was something I was trying to avoid. It gets freezing down there. The cold was one extra element of risk I did not really want to deal with if I could have avoided it.
WS – What were the logistical difficulties you faced sailing the wave?
AM – Pedra Branca is so remote. It is quite hard to imagine until you actually go out in a boat to look at it. Organising a boat and the support necessary was very complex – thankfully local Tassie charger Marti Paradisis was keen to help and basically sorted all of that out for me.
Figuring out the right winds and swell was a bit of a nightmare. I ended up getting out there on a calm day in a fishing boat, basically having to guess how the wave would break and what direction of wind would be ideal. Using my iPhone compass to get this crucial information was pretty funny but we got it right in the end.
WS – What sort of size swell were you looking for and wind direction?
AM – Honestly, I’m not really going to give this information away. The surfers do not really want everyone to suddenly know all the secrets that make this spot work and I think that is fair enough. What I will say is that I think Pedra Branca is probably the most consistent big wave on the planet. The waves I was getting out there were maxing at around 10m faces, and that was only with an average swell of 4m. The week before the mission, there was a huge storm and the swell buoy recorded 18m waves. It is quite possible that the biggest waves ever ridden could happen down there. The whole place gets smashed by massive swells all year round; the only problem is the winds that normally come with those swells. The local surfers probably only ride it two or three times a year when the winds are very light.