gosh, what year was it when we went to new caledonia? it must have been 1996 or around there? anyway, it was another of john callahan explorations. a pretty diverse group of us went aboard a nice catamaran and sailed through unchartered waters searching for that perfect wave. well, we found more than that, we found isolated islands, fish everywhere, and yes, perfect waves. we surfed where nobody’s every surfed before and put 2 famous surf spots on the map. this one was on the outer reef. i remember pulling up to the spot, the waves were going off so i jumped in before we even anchored. the current was so strong pulling us down into the impact zone. the sets were like 8′ or so. it wasn’t nothing like the mentawai’s, meaning, it wasn’t perfect. you had to paddle around dodging sets and fighting the current looking for that gem. well, this was my gem. i took off and seen the whole ocean swinging right to me from the deep blue channel. it’s either go straight and eat the reef for lunch, get hurt, and die. or grab my rail, hold a line with my short board, and hope for the best. that’s what i did. i got a nice barrel, then i ate shit. luckily i’m still around to talk about it…
john callahan is the man. he’s got connections into magazines from every country in the world. so going on surf trips with him was a big help for me. i met amazing people from all over the world, i experienced many cultures before it could ever be experienced by foreigners, and i got great photos published in magazines all around the world. from this wave alone, i got photos in magazines in france, brazil, japan, and even surfer magazine in america. callahan use to always tell me “kirby, all it takes is one wave, and one shot.” he was right….
this photo is on my wall. chris malloy, hans hagen, donavon frankenreiter, noah johnson, and glenn matsumoto were on this wonderful trip. i took 200 photos with my film camera. stay tuned…
