Getting skunked is all relative. If you show up at your local expecting offshore and overhead barrels but the wind has actually turned onshore and the tide hasn’t filled in, you probably got “skunked.” And to the contrary, if you thought you’d wake up to knee-high waves and end up with the occasional chest-high corner and nobody out, you’re pretty pumped. Conclusion: it’s all about expectations. And we never set expectations higher than the build-up to an overseas trip with warm water and remote waves you need a boat to get to.
Tim Elter is a German surfer who lives on the wave-rich Canary Islands and set an understandably high bar going into a trip to the Mentawais. Two years of COVID restrictions had delayed his return to the Mentawais — a place he’d visited in 2018 and never stopped thinking about after. By the time this next trip came around, he was champing at the bit for heavy conditions at one specific wave. La Niña had others plans.
“Changing winds, low-pressure patterns, and heavy rain created unusual conditions in the middle of the dry season,” Elter says, setting him up for at least a week of waiting for waves. “We had to accept our fate and make the most of what we had.”
Spoiler alert: Tim scored. Eventually. He just had to ride a bit of a rollercoaster before the Mentawais delivered.
