Watch: Milk & Honey

Is there anything more seductive than a board that echoes a surfer’s rhythm?  Think Curren on the Fireball, Craig on a Hypto, Burch on his rainbow, Rasta on the Lovelace. The chemistry’s tricky to define, but impossible to deny. EAST takes surfers and boards on a psychedelic speed date. But there’s nothing more intoxicating than a first love — the kind you adopted early, stayed with, and wore like a second skin. In lieu of an arranged marriage, we flew Stephanie Gilmore, Caity Simmers, Coco Ho and Frankie Harrer to the Philippines, and asked them to bring their favorite performance and alternative boards.  We expected thorns and roses. What we got was milk and honey.  “It’s ridiculous to say a shortboard is high-performance and other boards aren’t,” Stephanie Gilmore said. “All surfboards are high-performance in their own way.” “I think most CT surfers would benefit from riding alternative boards,” Caity Simmers said. “It would really finesse out their style,” Coco Ho added. Rather than working in opposition, the boards complemented one another. This allowed each surfer to express the full range of their surfing — not just the top end. On Friday, November 17th, the stars aligned. Caity, Steph, Coco, and Frankie flew to the Philippines with a week blocked off and swell on the horizon. Twenty six hours of planes, a stomach ache called Manilla airport,  and four oversized board bags later — a mini-typhoon welcomed us to the island of Siargao. [Caption: “Siargao reminds me of Bali 20 years ago,”said photographer/guide, Nate Lawrence. Our first three days on the tear-shaped island rained and thundered. Steph, Coco, and Frankie—already close friends—slipped into rhythm. Caity, the youngest by nearly a decade, treaded lightly at first. But ukuleles, 10% ciders, and (especially) Coco’s workout class proved great equalizers. By the second night, we sat under a deafening tin roof, and the information exchanged, commonly known as gossip, would be enough to bankroll this publication for six months. On day four, the skies turned blue. Cloud 9 turned ethereal. Cameras pressed record. The locals got their selfies in. Caity found steeper ramps than Lakey Peak. Then Steph (begrudgingly) did as well. Frankie and Coco made a playground out of fire coral.. A few days of clean surf didn’t provide enough footage for a film, so we teed up a few more trips — including one where Caity rides Dave Rasta’s winning EAST board. “I feel the weight of influencing the next generation,” Ms. Simmers said in an offcut. “Because of how much I looked up to Steph.” South Pacific takeaways (in no particular order): Being cool and the best at everything aren’t mutually exclusive. The high spirits ran dry on day five. The wind howled.  Steph pulled out her ukelele and said, “Really? Have you  never been skunked on a surf trip before? This is part of it. She proceeded to serenade the crew with “Sex And Candy”, dug a splinter out of her foot with a kitchen knife, and led the best night tour of the trip. Style lives in the sunlight. Like her surfing, Frankie is bold, unyielding, and based in her opinions. As a mom (of two) who surfs Chopes and has toes in the skate and fashion world — the girls listened when Frankie spoke. She anchored the road trip conversation with topics ranging from surfers on tour to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.  Success and happiness don’t (always) hate each other. The tour didn’t appeal to Coco Ho so she leaned into her identity, which appeals to more than 664,000 strangers. With the confidence of Blue Ivy, Coco Ho is the female face of Volcom, runs her own board label, and dances on waves that most fear. Do: Meet your heroes.On the last day of the trip, Caity sat on a white duvet in quiet discomfort — not because she was 7,380 miles from Oceanside, but because two flat whites arrived in her room 30 seconds after she’d tapped a button on her resort-appointed iPad. The youth cult princess didn’t embrace five-star living. But in the end, she decided she did like her heroes.