Imagine Spending Eight Hours In A Makeshift Canoe — Only To Realize The Google Earth Image Was A Mirage

Everybody gets skunked.

Some more than others.

Scoring waves often takes leaps of faith — and nobody gets it right all the time.

Maybe you’ve opted for a fickle reef instead of a reliable beachie — and been disappointed to find wobbly, morning sick dribble.

Maybe you’ve even flown to Indonesia, or Fiji, or the Maldives — and been greeted with an unseasonable flat spell (see: Kandui upon our arrival.)

However, I can almost say for sure; that you have never traveled to a tiny African country, driven eight hours through flooded roads to a port town, convinced a local fisherman to take you in his small boat to a rivermouth wave you found on Google Satellite in the next country over — only to find that the wave is a jumbled mess of dangerous white water.

‘Crossing Borders’ is precisely this situation. The film, featuring longtime surf explorers Natxo Gonzalez, Kepa Acero, and Aritz Aranburu, is the only time I have ever been thoroughly entertained by the depiction of a complete skunking.

It’s emotional, culturally tuned in, and downright funny.

And yes, the crew of would be Mayflower-ers do atleast get redeemed with serviceable waves in the Liberian town of Robertsport — a left point setup, which you can read about here.

Otherwise, flick those English closed-captions on and enjoy the secondhand discomfort of an African surf trip gone very awry.