When Laurie Towner was 14 years old, he hopped aboard an old fishing trawler with his dad. They traveled for three days over rough seas, their vessel being relentlessly tossed by the stormy seas. Full of seasickness and dead tired from lack of sleep, the young Laurie finally arrived at a remote island in the Coral Sea. It was fringed by shallow reefs and watched over by towering mountains. It was a place he never forgot.
Now, of course, Laurie Towner is something of a legend. Five years after that initial trip to the island, he would shake the surfing world with an iconic paddle wave at Shipstern Bluff. He was still relatively unknown to the wider surfing world, but with that one single wave, he put himself on everyone’s radar.
He lives a relatively quiet life now, and surfing is still very much a pillar of it. He was recently able to relive his journey to that special little atoll, and the trip was made into the short edit you see above.
