Pacific Meandering - Torren Martyn

With winter well and truly kicked into gear in the Southern Hemisphere, Torren Martyn and Film maker Ishka Folkwell decided it was the right time to chase a warm water swell in an idyllic part of the Pacific Ocean. We caught up with Torren to get some perspective on the trip.

📷 Jose Garcia

📷 Ishka Folkwell

How did the trip to the Pacific come about?
The trip to Colonial Polynesia came around out of the Blue, It's been a dream of mine to go there for years, but since my partner Aiyana and I have got the sailing bug we kind of made a pact with ourselves that in order to get to some of those remote Pacific islands that we've both wanted to visit for so long, then we needed to sail there.

That kind of all went out the window for me when Ishka called me all excited about a healthy little run of swell heading in that direction. Our good mate Laurie Towner and his long time friend Dylan Longbottom who have both spent a respectable amount of time chasing swells in that area were both pretty excited about the forecast. It didn't take too much convincing for Ishka and I to jump on the opportunity and take the much quicker track on the big bird across the pacific ocean.

📷 Ishka Folkwell

Simon Jones and yourself have worked closely on specific boards for backside tube riding. What were you riding and what changes went into these boards?
Yeah with Simon and I a lot of the board development for backside surfing and tube riding has been from surfing longer wavesin the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This reef break is a wave of its own category and having never been there I didn't know what to expect, so I asked Laurie Towner about his go-to boards. After a quick chat his conclusion and advice was to "take the boards you normally ride in heavy slabbing waves.

I took with me four twin fins in total. I had a 5'8 and 6'0 channel bottom diamond tail and a 6'7 and 6'9 with round tails, all with double or triple stringers for added strength. Thankfully they all survived.

📷 Jose Garcia

I noticed you were on Kayaks? Did you use a different form of paddle power to get to the waves?
For the best part of our time surfing here I'd paddle my surfboards out to the line-up and tie up a spare board to the mooring buoy out there and because Ishka was filming from the channel we rented a little dinghy and captain (Thanks Angelo) to keep Ishka in a good spot to film.

In the remaining few days once the swell had dropped we visited one of the neighbouring islands and rented a couple of kayaks to paddle out to surf the reefs.

📷 Jose Garcia

📷 Ishka Folkwell

How do the waves in the Indian Ocean where you were sailing compare to those in the Tropical Pacific?
Similar in a sense, warm water and mostly-predictable shallow reef breaks. I'd say the coral is generally more alive and consequential in the Pacific over the Indian ocean. Both have an abundance of waves and cover a range of ecosystems so it's hard to compare or generalise too much.

📷 Ishka Folkwell

It was a quick trip for you and Ishka. Do you have plans to head back there and explore the area more?
Yeah it was certainly one of our quicker trips we've ever done. We were there for about 12 days or so, I almost felt guilty, actually no, I did feel fully guilty about being there without my partner Aiyana. Haha. It's such a beautiful place, second to none in my books of tropical paradise. We're definitely working towards a Pacific sailing adventure now.

📷 Ishka Folkwell

What projects are you working on over the next few months?
We are still working on it but are definitely getting closer to finishing the sailing film from our year aboard Calypte, which has been a massive job for Ishka but it's really starting to come together. This latest trip over to Polynesia is going to be one of the sections in a new film where we are aiming to visit a couple of iconic left handers in the more remote corners of the world.