See daily photographs of your friends and family at WavePark Mentawai Resort.

April 23rd

Here is Ross flying his way into the pit.  Ross only had a week on the island, so he gave it everything he had from day 0 to day 8..

April 22nd

Today was the first day riding a thruster after 4 months of riding a fish.  My promise was that I would ride the fish until I thought the waves warranted something to sustain life and limb.  For this barrel I was glad I had the extra holding power on the tail.

April 21st

Ross got the best barrel of his life yesterday, and then today happened.  Now he can chalk up the biggest barrel of his life as well.  I'm proud to have been a part of both.  

April 20th

I had filled this spot with a bummed out political rant against the owners and operators of the jet skis that towed surfers in on top of us as we were paddle surfing on this beautiful day.  Then I realized you all don't come here to read or talk trash, you come here to escape, to put yourself in Maury's shoes here, taking off on a thundering right, getting ready to bottom turn around one of the biggest waves of his life. 

There is a blog though: surfguidementawai.blogspot.com, and I'll do all the trash talking I want!

April 19th

Here's Ross on his second day on the island.  A return guest from the great quake of '07, Ross was in Bali and decided to escape the madness and come up for a week.  "Every time I get to Bali I ask myself, 'why am I here?'" he says.  "Never again".  Yeah right.  In the meantime, when the allure of Bali wears thin, Ross knows where to come to get his wave tally up.

April 18th

We usually have our crew's photographs up on the wall in the bar so the guests get to know our crew by name, not just, "hey, YOU".  So we've updated all our pictures today, and here is Man, a particularly handsome Man that has been taking care of our guest's accommodation for years.

April 17th

I've decided to stop naming waves on this blog.  The other option would be to delay our shots by a couple days, the purpose being to throw off anybody on our tail.  I'll give you this hint about this wave that Matt met this morning:  the wave we surfed today was one featured in a recent WavePark Video of the week, Portals of Fun.

April 16th

Here is Gendut, our crew manager, putting in splicing time for the Mentawai Mooring Movement.  Since the end of last season, we have lost 3 moorings at Tikis and one at Bank Vaults.  We've decided to change our system of mooring in those locations and use prefabricated concrete blocks weighing about 50 kilos each (same as a sack of cement).  The moorings can have more weight added to them if necessary, and we think this "module" style of anchoring the moorings will be more practical, easier to deploy and longer lasting than our previous shackle and chain method in these locations in 2008.

April 15th

There are just 2 couples on the island at the moment, one that just got engaged!  Congratulations to Amaury and Gaby. Here is Jen, the one non-surfer of the group, doing the non-surfing kind of thing.

April 14th

New guests today and straight into some decent overhead waves.  For not having surfed over coral reefs in a long, long time, Matt is showing he's not afraid of a hard turn at Tikis..

April 13th

This is not a black and white photo.  This is what Hideaways looks like in the early morning after a rain squall.  Alice braved the elements to hike down the point and get some shots of the first decent Hideaways of this trip.

April 12th

This is the kind of turn I'm working towards on my 5'10 twinny. Vertical snaps aren't really working for me with the transition of weight off the bottom turn from back foot to front foot making the fins slide free.  But anything to do with speed or horizontal turning seems to work fine, so I'm working on pushing those boundaries to see where the limits are of the two fin setup. 

April 11th

Just two of us out at Bank Vaults today.  When the tide drops and the water tries to pile on top of the reef, obtuse barrels sometimes form like this wave, looking like it's been stretched with some photoshop tool.

April 10th

The swell started showing this afternoon.  Nice to see a bit of size and share it with a few friends at Bank Vaults.  The late afternoon sun there always give the ocean a silver glint, like waves are breaking of liquid mercury.

April 9th

This is my body double Brian. The only difference is he's got a short sleeve rash guard and mine is long sleeve...  He's always looking for the barrel, setting himself up for some time in the shade here at Pistols.

April 8th

This guy was very curious, swimming past the boat while I was shooting photos of the guests surfing Rifles.  To see one of these snakes in the water is about as rare as seeing a shark, and about as beautiful.  As far as danger, I would much rather confront a shark than have to deal with an angry sea snake.

April 7th

Well, Gaby gets it again.  Not much to be said about this one.  Double overhead for a woman measuring 5'2 with a 10ft. heart.

April 6th

Too funny to pass up. Here is Karen and her husband Tom sharing a wave at Tikis.  Tom insists that he was "showing her the way", but somehow I can tell Karen isn't convinced...

April 5th

Here is Gaby's fiancee Amaury getting shacked at the same wave.  First day's Indian Ocean delight.

April 4th

New batch of guests and straight into some great waves.  Here's Gaby from racing a section at my favourite wave.   Will be hard to top this session as their first, but we'll do our best.

We are standing by to make your dreams a reality.

The original secret surfing location and Mentawai adventure surfing resort in the Mentawai Islands,

West Sumatra, Indonesia.