The Perfect Day: Tavarua, Fiji

While this view of Restaurants may appear alluring, what you don’t see is the river-like current running between Tavarua and its island neighbor Namotu, making it practically impossible to hold your position. This fact didn’t deter some of the guys. “Shane was totally composed the whole time. He’s been working as a boatman out at Tavarua for a little while now, and you could just tell based on how far up the reef he was positioned and how deep he sat in the tube that his experience out there’s paying off huge,” says McIntosh, who wasn’t about to back down when duty called at Tavi Rights.

DORIAN: When we got out there in the morning, I definitely didn’t think we were going to tow in that day. It didn’t feel like it was coming up. It was supposed to increase all day, but it was coming up so slowly you couldn’t really materially see it coming up.

SERVAIS: We were pretty much out there all day, the conditions were just flawless, not a drop of water out of place, and the light would get good and then the sun would go behind some clouds for a while, and then the light would get good again.

MCINTOSH: So after Cloudbreak all day on Tuesday, on Wednesday I was thinking, ‘I wanna go frontside.’ So we go out to the right. Shane’s surfed it pretty good once or twice, and from what he was telling me it’s pretty fickle. But on this day it would cap outside, kind of like Lance’s, and you’d catch that and it was just such a roll-in. You’d do a big roundhouse and then drive into the double-up. That was only on the bigger ones, there were some that wouldn’t break and would just slab on the inside. But the ones that would cap outside were the ones. The right was just ridiculous. I don’t know how to judge it, a long version of Backdoor maybe, but with some stairs in it as the tide went out. Shane was saying that it only likes a high tide; once it starts going out it changes shape and the barrels get all crazy on top of each other.

DORIAN: The right is really fickle. It only breaks on a high tide. Last year I was here for two months. The next day it dropped off a bit. Cloudbreak didn’t look that great in the morning so we were waiting for things to sort of clean up, and me and Jun Jo went and looked from the tower and we saw this wave, this 8-footer just rip off. And we were hyperventilating on the way to the boat. And we saw Fuller and Reef and we told them: ‘Get your shit.’ We just took a boat out there. It was so funny because Tom Servais was so stoked on the day before and he was like, ‘Really, the right? Really?’ So we were pulling up to the right, and he said, ‘OK boys, do some big turns and some airs and tricks and stuff.’ He wanted to get photos but we were like, ‘Tom, you’re tripping. Wait till you see a set wave.’ And the first one came in and it was like an 8-foot box. It was just draining down the reef.

BOOTH: After Tuesday we felt invincible, like it was a 2-foot beachbreak day. Basically, it was f---ing giant. It hasn’t been that large for 10 years, put it that way. And it’s different when you watch guys like Dorian and Reef and Fuller, and they’re in that type of surf all the time, and they know when it’s on. I watched Cloudbreak and the whole island go to a whole different level on this trip like I’ve never, ever seen before. It was so big at Restaurants on Tuesday and Wednesday, if you were looking at it from the restaurant, when a set would come in the waves were breaking so hard they’d go below sea level and when they’d explode you’d lose Namotu in the background for a split second. You couldn’t see the island. And then at high tide on Tuesday there were these solid 10-foot sets coming in and what would happen is a tidal push would go through Kiddieland and the water would be washing towards Boatman’s Rights 10 mph sideways. It was freaky. At the end of Restaurants there was so much current and surge that whitewater was breaking into the boats that were moored in the channel.

SERVAIS: Hands down, the best three days we’ve ever seen in a row. Everything was good. There were no bad accidents, no Jet Ski dramas. The Jet Ski that we were using on the tow-in day is the same ski that was used on the Conan day, and myself, Brandon Lillard and Dave Oats were all there for the Conan day as well. The three of us were there for both swells, so that makes it even more special.

BOOTH: I’ve been going there for 15 years now, and I’ve never seen it like that. Every spot broke perfectly. The place just lit up like a Christmas tree.

For video and more photos of this Tavarua session, go to SurferMag.com/perfectday