A Sequence You’ll Love: Leroy Bellanto, Mentawai Islands
“It was the best wave of my life no question.”
The day before, fresh off the plane, Leroy Bellanto paddled out over-head Bank Vaults and went down on his very first wave. “I hit the reef so hard I thought my trip was over,” he recounted. Two days later, ample anti-inflammatories, hours of stretching and tending to his wounds, he returned to the line-up to get his return on investment, only to come unstuck again in a similar fashion.
“The wave before this one, I was too deep and got one of the biggest floggings of my life. Rattled, I paddled back out. Sitting there collecting my thoughts, I see this thing rolling in… I didn’t know what was going to happen ‘cos it wasn’t really barrelling consistently on the take off, but next thing I know I was pulling in. I think it speaks for itself. It was best wave of my life no question. A couple of the surf guides came over afterwards and said that was the best barrel they’d seen in the Ments.”
Photographer Greig Sharp had clicked about fifty frames of Leroy’s glass tunnel, at least thirty of them are worthy of being hung on a wall.
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