Andrew Doheny, strident swerve, British Virgin Islands

Now ain’t this just…everything. The colour of the water, the way Newport’s Andrew Doheny discards his tail, the catamaran rocking just offshore, the terrified spectator inside hiding like a fugitive from the erratic surfboard. This sequence was taken by New Jersey photographer Seth Stafford last year while Hurricane Sandy was tearing his home state apart. “It’s the funnest wave, it’s like Trestles, a soft lip wave, but in dreamy blue water. And it was just like watching Andrew at Trestles, finners, slides, carves and all with that flow,” says Seth, who spent five days on a pal’s 45-foot cat with Doheny, Brendon Gibbens and Dylan Graves. The British Virgin Islands ain’t too familiar are they? Chances are you’ll never go. So why don’t we ask Seth to describe this Caribbean dream for us? “It’s steep,” he says. “It goes from the water level straight to cliffs. The mountains go up quickly so no matter where you surf you’re looking up at green mountains. If you’re on the land and you wanna go a couple of miles it takes forever ‘cause you have to switch back up and down the hills.” The board he’s mistreating in the photographs is a Doheny shape, too. What a kid! What vitality!