Fiji Boat Trip Story #1
It was 2006 and Lyndie Irons’ boobs were big, and they were good, and they seemed to be getting bigger, and better, as the trip went on. I really did feel for the poor girl. We were on a Red Bull boat trip in Fiji. Forget the usual Tavarua perfection, or Namotu alcohol based fun, on this trip we were to scour the southern atolls of Fiji, searching for unsurfed waves in that endless series of archipelagoes that dot long into the Pacific. Surely, the thinking was, there had to be another Cloudbreak out there somewhere?
Surf Consistency: 7 Wave Variety: 4
Climate: 9 Budget: 3 Radness: 8
The boat was big. It had to be. Red Bull had organised a star studded cast of surfers, a slew of Red Bull execs and a plethora of media hangers on to go with it. There must have been 30 guys on the boat, including the likes of Bruce and Andy Irons, Mick Fanning, Jamie O’Brien and Ian Walsh. There was only one female on board however, Andy’s wife Lyndie. And, as I said, her boobs were big, and they were good, and they seemed to be getting bigger, and better as the trip went on.
However that didn’t stop me from striking up a friendship with Lyndie. She was, as she is now, friendly and hot and kind and funny. She laughed at my jokes and asked me questions about my family and drank white wine with a sweet tinkly smile and I desperately and painfully tried to not look at her boobs, even though they were often covered with the just the tiniest flimsy of colourful fabric. It helped that Andy was often at the table and while I hadn’t learned much in my surf journalist career, I had learned that it wasn’t a good idea to look at a three times world champion’s wife’s boobs while he was sitting opposite me at the dinner table.
One night after the usual enforced six Red Bull infused cocktails (after ten days we hadn’t found a three foot Canggu, let alone a 10 foot Cloudbreak) Lyndie was laughing long and hard at one of my post dinner witticisms. I hadn’t looked at her breasts for a good 25 minutes and felt justifiably proud of myself. Andy too was laughing, I think, and it was then that Lyndie said, “Hey Andy, isn’t Ben funny? I reckon he is just like Napoleon Dynamite.” Now then there was a real laughter, the table erupting in my uncanny resemblance to the movie character.
It was then that Lyndie said, “Hey Andy, isn’t Ben funny? I reckon he is just like Napoleon Dynamite”
The problem was I hadn’t seen the movie. I just naturally assumed that the character must have been hellishly humourous and (no doubt) oddly attractive. Andy started calling me Dynamite, which gave me an intense rush of pleasure (my own nickname!) and life on board was great. Sure we only surfed one decent wave in 12 days, and even then we couldn’t paddle out so as not to wreck the shot, but I had my new best buddies, a new nickname and all the Red Bull I could inject. It was only on the final night, when someone passed me a copy of Napoleon Dynamite, when my worlds came crashing down. I switched on the DVD and was pained to discover that Lyndie clearly saw me as a sexless, pale, high-school outcast with a bushy red Afro, spectacles, and a perpetual pained look on his face.
The next morning, I couldn’t look her in the face and I couldn’t look her in the boobs. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I had been to the outer reaches of Fiji and hadn’t surfed a wave over three foot. I had made friends with Andy and Lyndie Irons, and they had laughed in my face. Lyndie’s boobs look great, and I looked like a geek fucked by a nerd. There was, I think, a lesson in there somewhere.
Fiji Boat Trip Story #2
Same boat, same outer islands of Fiji. The day and night before had been huge. Another flat day, which led to an all day drinking session, then a night of poker, which culminated in me and my mate Ant MacDonald being the last ones up watching Andy and Bruce each betting half my yearly wage on a final hand to the death. Bruce won and Andy predictably blew his top, as only he could when losing to his brother. We heard later that he went back to his cabin and vented his rage by hurling his own laptop into the Pacific.
By the time the sun rose the next day, the air was pregnant with that sick, sullen hangover tension. There were no waves, the heat was oppressive, and Andy was on deck with a sore head, leaving the rest of us treading on eggshells around the unspoken, but well known, fact of the overboard computer.
Getting up from breakfast, Andy announced that he had had enough and was going to his cabin, an explicit warning for everyone to leave him the fuck alone.
“Going to watch some DVD’s on your laptop?” piped up his mate Ian Walsh in a classic prodding of the bear. No one knew which way it was going to go until Andy stopped and laughed, as did the rest of us.
The tension was punctured. Life could move on.
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