nothing beats eating fresh sashimi and poke every evening for 10 days. this is like a daily routine on our boat trips for the past 10 plus years. i’d estimate thousands of dollars each trip ranging from lobster sashimi, to ika, to tai, to GT, and much more of a selection. my favorite has to be the spicy poke wrapped in nori dipped in ponzu and yuzukosho. OMG!

add a bintang and friends, then you got a floating party every night!

somebody asked me how i know Kosei-san. the answer? my blog. it was over 2 years ago when this successful family/business man sent me an email expressing his passion for surfing and traveling. i could read between the words that he really wanted to enter our world. now, he’s in it living and surfing his dream. his surfing level went up 5 levels from 2 years ago and we were all stoked to see him smiling after every session. big bottom turn at Bintangs!

Alyssa Wooten on her first boat mentawai boat trip. good to see this young talented energetic girl chasing her dreams. we had some great conversations on the boat and now i know this girl 10x more than i thought i did. good to watch her growing up.

we hardly got to dive on this trip. maybe only 4 times? but this dive outside HT’s was my favorite. Asako and Reika wanted to learn how to free dive so the came out to the blue water and i couldn’t stop laughing at their faces and screams. i was down 50′ on one dive and could hear the girls screaming on the surface. classic!

to tell you the truth, i couldn’t believe our boat didn’t break in half, crack, or flip over during the first night storm. i slept with my mask and snorkel just to prepare for the worst. but after surviving that, the Naga Laut proved it can take a beating and keep on ticking!

Tokura-san, Akazawa-san, and Naoka.
Japanese food is ICHIBAN!

9 of the 11 days we were out in the ocean it was either raining, storming, thunder, cloudy, lightning, or just super dark. for me as a photographer, it was one of my hardest challenges to get good photos. my camera getting rained on, everything foggy, wet, and just yucky. for some photos, i had to really max out my camera settings to take some decent photos. it was hard and frustrating because the surfing and waves were good, just the weather sucked. imagine being stuck on a boat with 18 people nowhere to go? day in and day out. i really got to know my bed a lot. haha.

the fishing was awesome, probably the best fishing ever for me in the mentawai. the water was dirty most everywhere from the rain so we had to catch our fish the old fashioned way. sashimi and poke almost every night.

on every trip, somebody always gets hurt. this time, it was ayaka suzuki. at 16 years old, i haven’t met another girl her age that is so strong. when toda-san squeezed the lime on her cuts everyday, she took it like a woman. i have lots more respect for ayaka now.

this is macaroni’s. this are the conditions the mentawai’s have to offer. all you need is one, and you’ll have a great day.

asako mizuno was the birthday girl. turned 19 years old on a boat in the middle of the indian ocean. i bet she won’t forget this one.
anyway, gotta start uploading photos to my computer and sorting things out. this is the part of my job i hate the most. i love looking at them, but hate organizing them. everybody got some great photos in the short amount of time we had shooting. stay tuned!