Patience, Perseverance And A Deadly Typhoon Named Vinta

“We were there for nine days and spent six of them indoors,” Torren Martyn chirped over the phone. While the rest of us were seeing out the year with family, friends and our chosen substances of celebration, Torren and his filmer, Ishka Folkwell were bunkered down on an island in South East Asia. They had a window for a SurfStitch supported adventure, seen favourable charts, rolled the dice and met instead with a Typhoon that took an unexpected turn, making landfall and raining all over their parade. They had nine days. They shot only two sessions over one of them.

“Commonly the Typhoons around here come from the south and track north, with a couple of rough days in the midst of it,” Torren explained. “Usually with favourable winds on the tail end of the system. Unfortunately this one went straight over land, tracking west and causing a whole lot of chaos and destruction. I’ve never seen a forecast change so dramatically.”

“We had a glimpse of hope for a clean faced wave over on a protected fickle tip on the other side of the island. We were so over the moon to find a decent surfable wave. We spent about seven hours in the water, trotting around the jungle between these two little novelty set ups without food and water. The surfing in the film was shot from these two surfs.”

So what did they do to pass the time? Drink? “Every day.”

The ideal way to get around on remote, typhoon-damaged islands…