The Surfers Journal
Light / Dark
BOOOOOOM.
Three days pass.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
America ends World War II. Two years later, the nation controls Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania. Two decades later, America births island-hopping Air Micronesia, pivotal in the postwar bloom of this Pacific backwater.
Why? Consider: a 2,000-mile equatorial splash of sunny archipelagos betwixt Hawaii and Southeast Asia. From east to west: Republic of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Republic of Nauru, Republic of Kiribati. The land area is 1,245 square miles across 4.5 million square miles of water, all of it bloodied and boned, hungover by the scars of strife.
Micronesia (“small islands”) was pioneered by Austronesians. Then Magellan, then colonization by Spain. The Spanish-American War and consequent Philippine-American War (1898–1902) ceded Guam to the United States. Germany claimed or purchased most of the rest.
Japan seized the isles from Germany in early World War I and sought to weave them into its empire. The League of Nations (forebear of the United Nations) characterized Micronesia as a quiet sector of the League’s South Seas Mandate to be blithely overseen by Japan.
Instead, Japan inserted its own government and ruled with iron-fist impunity. Its nerve center was Palau, with strategic command from Jaluit to Saipan.
BOOOOM—conventional but innumerable.
America enters World War II. From 1943 to 1944, starting at Tarawa Atoll, Micronesia becomes a brutal westward battleground. The Allies vs. Japan.
With its Pacific Fleet push, America wins the most pivotal naval battles and the island-hopping campaign. Then, of course, are the two atomic bombs, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By 1947, Micronesia is a US Navy–lorded UN trusteeship: the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI). In 1951, via funds from the US Department of the Interior, it’s declared that the Trust shall advance Micronesia socially and economically. Perhaps most importantly, and not publicly stressed: Freed from Emperor Hirohito, the islands are geostrategic gold. Ergo the latent Trust theory as buffer and buttress for global harmony. Ergo future US military installations. Ergo the US using Marshallese atolls to play with nuclear weapons.
But that’s another story.
In 1968, Air Micronesia (“Air Mike”) is born as a subsidiary of Continental Airlines. Honolulu to Okinawa and back. (Okinawa, a US occupation, will be returned to Japan in 1972.)
“[We see this] air service as a central force in the economic life of the TTPI and a major influence on the social, cultural, and administrative fabric,” Continental Chairman and CEO Robert Six says, parroting the Trust jargon. “Efficient and expanded air service will play a major part in spurring the growth of commerce and tourism.”
Developing the route is a logistical nightmare. Micronesia lacks telecommunication with the outside world. Radio is spotty. Millions of square ocean miles equals numerous overwater flights requiring complexities of navigation, fueling, weight, cargo, pilot skill, mechanicals, short unlit airstrips (built by Japan), primitive (or complete lack of) island infrastructure.
Air Micronesia flies a Douglas DC-6, two amphibious planes, and a trusty Boeing 727 nicknamed “Ju-Ju.” It has nose-wheel brakes and special chine tires to deflect standing rainwater from the engine intakes. Its belly and wings are slathered with Teflon to limit damage from the rubbly coral runways. Ju-Ju is the first jet most Micronesians have ever seen.
In the first five years, despite obstacles and adolescence, Air Mike completes an impressive 97 percent of its schedule. The company is, William H. Stewart writes in the Saipan Tribune, the “most important factor in the future development” of Micronesia.
In 1975 the TTPI starts to dissolve, initially when the Northern Marianas become a US commonwealth. In 1979, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, and Yap gel into a new nation called the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). “Micronesia” is now a country and a region. The Marshalls break off and also become sovereign in 1986. Ditto Palau in 1994.
The Compacts of Free Association (COFA) keeps things lubricated when the TTPI finally ends in 1986. COFA is a refined deal that includes only Palau, the Marshalls, and the FSM. The trio is supplied with defense provisions, disaster relief, medical and health-care services, welfare programs, weather data, grants, infrastructure improvements, air transport (obviously), and myriad other forms of aid. In exchange, the islands allow the US exclusive rights and accessibility in the West-Central Pacific.
Air Micronesia is soon rebranded as Continental Air Micronesia. In 1992, it becomes a separate Guam-HQed line called Continental Micronesia, which absorbs Air Micronesia, which is officially killed.
In 2012, Continental and United Airlines merge to become United Continental Holdings. United absorbs all Continental routes. Finally, in 2019, United edits its parent company name from United Continental Holdings to United Airlines Holdings. Continental Airlines is history.
Which is why, just past dawn each Monday and Thursday, aboard Flight 154, a United Airlines Boeing 737 thrusts east, then lifts southwest from Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (IATA code: HNL).
The views below are exquisite. Mamala Bay’s blue tapestry beyond the depth fades of coral. Jades of the Ko‘olau Range. Cloud shadows.
Honolulu Harbor. Silhouettes of Waikiki high-rises and Diamond Head. Koko Crater. Hanauma Bay Ridge. Yes, Pearl Harbor.
Among the passengers and four Honolulu-based cabin crew are four Guam-based pilots—two captains, two first officers—because HNL has no United pilot base. And, just in case, a master aircraft mechanic (also from Guam) with an extensive kit of tools and spare parts.
One pilot team mans the cockpit. The other dozes in 1A and 1B, seats technically located in United First but designated for this route as “pilot seats.” The mechanic usually sits in row seven of Economy Plus.
After crossing the international date line, the flight’s first stop is Majuro Atoll (MAJ). Here, the pilot pairs swap. The Honolulu-based cabin crew exits for their overnight (or multi-night) Majuro layover. The Guam-based cabin crew boards the plane. In 1A/1B, the HNL-MAJ pilots lounge all the way to Guam. This unique process is reversed on United Airlines Flight 155, the eastbound route.
Barring any delays, the 737 lands Tuesday and Friday in the darkness of early eve at Guam’s Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport (GUM). Inside the previous 15 hours of flight will have been four more brief stops: Kwajalein Atoll (KWA), Kosrae (KSA), Pohnpei (PNI), and Chuuk (TKK). All six compose the remote steamy guts of UA154—the Island Hopper—a uniquely critical route, a lifeline for locals and tourists heading to and fro, for military and teachers and doctors and scientists and politicians and foreign and local businesses, bucket-listed for aviation geeks.
A bit of surf along the way, too.
Sixth floor, Koa Avenue. Macadamia nuts and weak coffee. Feeling ungrateful, I pouted through a smudged city window.
Ex-Honoluluan Daniel Jones rang from the North Shore.
“Hey, Kew. How’s Hawaii? Lotta buildings, yeah?”
Below, thrums of morning: jackhammers, hand hammers, smash-bang-backup beeps, trucks and more trucks, motorbikes and buses, workers shouting, cars honking, yakking young tourists walking with rented soft tops seeking stoke via ocean just one block away.
It was a generic dime of a Hawaiian day—sunny, 82°, slight breeze. But I felt sad, numb, and disoriented (also heartbroken) after swapping quiet Oregon woods for loud, muggy insanity, an unbelievable concrete jungle in vaunted Eden.
“It’s nuts, Kew,” Daniel added, still on the topic of urban construction. “No one can believe it.”
Two hours later, we were in his gray Tacoma on Ala Wai Boulevard, whisking somewhere for surf. Daniel pointed at the polluted Ala Wai Canal.
“Yeah, this was all swampland,” he said. “That’s why they made the canal—to drain the water. Used to grow rice and taro. Ala Moana was ocean, and they filled that in too. At high tide, the bottom parking lot will puddle with salt water. Crazy humans just doing whatever they want, eh?”
He smiled easily, as he often does—a chronic smiler in a land of things to make you frown.
“Let’s go check the waves there,” he said. “You’ll be stoked.”
We cut south on Kahanamoku Street to an empty parking spot fronting Rockpile, the snappy little reef flanked by Bowls and Kaiser’s, all opposite Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon, aka Hilton Lagoon, a murky man-made saltwater pool disconnected from the ocean that, for me, evoked notions of a public bacterial soup. The marina, its many boats mirrored on water beneath a blended forest of masts and palms and high-rises, reminded me of downtown San Diego, America’s so-called “Finest City,” though Honolulu actually might be.
Rockpile fed us small east windswell with an odd south set. Almost as many women as men were out pawing around. It was relatively crowded, but nobody was talking—or looking pleased.
After our 45-minute session, under the subtle waxing cloud pastels of pinks and oranges meshing into the sky, we inched atop congested four-lane (all one-way) Kalakaua Avenue, “Rodeo Drive of the Pacific,” a tree-lined hive of humanity wholly bizarre in subtropical context. Tailgaters, police sirens, modified exhausts, honking, sidewalks thronged, every corner bristling with bag-gripping shoppers awaiting the little green light.
Daniel mused. “Prada. Dior. Yeah, man—go get yourself some shoes. Some perfume. There’s Aloha Beer. I haven’t tried their stuff. Oh, Blue Note is up in that building. Good music spot.”
At the grand abused figure of Duke Kahanamoku’s bronze, festooned with colorful swaying leis, we emerged beachside, where phone-holding crowds were gathered. I sat transfixed.
“And this is the off-season, Kew.”
Somewhere, a reggae band rhythmically strummed and thumped away on the sand.
“Steel Pulse played at the Shell a few nights ago,” Daniel said. “Bummed I missed it. Family duties.”
“Last reggae show I saw was Ziggy Marley in July,” I said.
“Where?”
“Jacksonville, Oregon. Hey, fun fact: Ziggy isn’t his real name. It’s David.”
“Oh yeah? My kid’s given name is Ziggy. It’s on his birth certificate.”
“That’s tight, dude. Ziggy?”
“Ziggy Stardust, brah.”
“Does he surf?”
“He’s 1 year old. But he stood up and rode two waves. Duke Kahanamoku style. Parallel stance. Like, right on the beach, from here to the front of the car. For two seconds, he stood. No one told him to. He just did it. Smile for days.”
Later, alone and away from the hordes at Waikiki Beach, I went for a swim dreamily in the brine, absorbing the sounds and scenics, sensing the ancients. I stroked out to the channel between surf spots. Nobody and no waves at Queen’s, but several people crowded Canoes—idle surfers, paddlers, kayakers, SUPers with phones in plastic holders to capture the classic screen saver.
Waikiki sunsets—an industry. Golden-hour surf lessons. Weddings in front of the Moana Surfrider. Yoga classes on the Kuhio Beach Hula Mound. Catamarans and sailboats—all booked for their daily happy-hour sail. For many, Waikiki is indeed the happiest place on earth.
Upon dusk, I swam in. Near shore, a small girl was receiving a surf lesson from a large Hawaiian still wearing his sunglasses. He pushed her into a wavelet and urged with the usual “Up! Up!”
Immediately, she stood, and for a few seconds yelped with delicate purity of glee. I hooted. The Hawaiian looked over and grinned.
“Yup, brah,” he said. “Makes ’em smile. Every single time.”
“Going to Beran?”
Per my board bag, this I was asked within one hour by an airport customs agent, two men awaiting rides, my taxi driver, the hotel clerk, and, finally, the hotel bartender.
“No,” I said. “May I have another Asahi?”
Twenty years has an odd way of muddling memory. I held zero data on my hotel or its location, its bar, its restaurant—absolutely nothing—despite occupying one of its quaint bungalows in September 2004.
No idea how many nights or how many days I spent on the beautiful adjacent atoll called Arno. Some kind of time warp, as if the trip never occurred, or it did only during a mentally infertile period of youth (age 29), led as I was by the hand of the nascent tourism office, which, back then, seemed well-funded and well-intentioned, inviting me down to explore heretofore-unknown waves in the Marshall Islands.
Surfing/kiting/foiling was not a thing here before the great captain Martin Daly slowly unveiled it to our collective psyche. Beran Island, his luxury resort a quick flight from Majuro, is a quite fine place to get to. If you can.
First impressions of a second visit: basic squalor with a weird dichotomy of commerce—being, as it is, the nation’s capital. Garbage, packs of wild dogs, dilapidation, the reek of rot and diesel, stray pigs, sweaty jogging youths, reefer ships fat with tuna, crowds of new cars despite the overwhelming poverty. I did not recall Majuro this way. Hard-edged, with really no beaches nor allure, a polluted ribbon of rubble, indeed a gritty microworld reflected in the tremendous puddles of last night’s rainfall upon a landscape so flat, drainage is nil.
I did recall fearing the reef and rip current while trying to surf the atoll’s one notch accessible by car. In 1983, Japan built a concrete bridge spanning a small man-made boat channel on Majuro’s south coast. A crude right-hander was born. So crude and abrupt, it was nigh surfable. Perhaps a fun bodyboard nook. Overall, Majuro is not a place for surfing.
Or is it?
Look at a map.
“Our boat doesn’t go that far,” my hotel manager said when I laid one out and pointed. “You want to go surfing there?”
“Ideally.”
“We can figure something out. Come back in 15 minutes.”
Twenty-four hours later, courtesy of two 90-horsepower Hondas, Captain Kyle and I were blasting across the sheet-glass lagoon.
“Want a beer?” he asked.
Micronesia’s unofficial official (and my preferred) beer is Asahi Pacific Blue, “clear and tasty,” Japanese-branded but Chinese-brewed. At the dock, I’d found Kyle sipping Bud Light, the sole and unfortunate option in his boat’s cooler.
“Surf first,” I said, “then beer.”
“I don’t think there are waves. Seas are low and winds very calm.”
He named the various palmy islets as we sped past. Micro whitewater was spied in the gaps between, but the spot I wanted to check—a quasi right point—was dead flat.
“Let’s go see some other breaks,” Kyle said. An expert fisherman, he was well-attuned to whitewater “breaks” and knew to normally avoid them.
After the next islet, we rounded the reef and I fell instantly agog. Typically a windblown mess, a set of perfect little lefts looped in the sparkling orange of afternoon. Not Nirvana or Amnesia—two Beran waves—but this was something.
A black-naped tern swooped low over us with a hello—a cute, distinct beep.
“We’ll drink to that,” I lipped before slipping board and body over the scuffed white gunwale.
Water: silken. Dreamy crystalline. Low tide rising. Glassy, consistent windswell curls. Swirls of black noddies and skittering baitfish. Indeed, Kyle confirmed it to be a prime position for “popping”—perhaps he would hook a giant trevally, a favorite fish he’d caught only while trolling. On his second cast, five minutes after my first beautiful zip of a wave—pop!—he did just that.
Rainbows reflexed us toward the nearest camera. A stern male voice came from unseen loudspeakers: “THIS IS A SECURE AREA. NO PHOTOS OR VIDEOS ARE ALLOWED.”
On the gray ferry over a turquoise lagoon to Echo Pier, shuttling from the adjacent ghetto islet of Ebeye, where civilians may stay, a few dozen Marshallese and I were transiting back through the US garrison on Kwajalein Atoll.
Here at Bucholz Army Airfield (built by Japan in World War II), only approved military personnel, their families, and government contractors are allowed to deplane into the base—a bizarre deal, the world’s sole military installation regularly serviced by a major commercial airline. If not visiting Ebeye, regular folks winging between Majuro and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) must remain onboard during the 45-minute stopover. Despite the wealth of Kwajalein material online, you are forbidden to take photos of anything out the windows. This is difficult to enforce. Turns out it’s easy to enforce, however, when you’re in plain view on the ferry from Ebeye.
“REPEAT. THIS IS A SECURE AREA. NO PHOTOS OR VIDEOS ARE ALLOWED.”
Arcing over the docked Marshallese cargo vessel Kyowa Stork and the USAV Worthy, an American missile-range instrumentation ship, was a perfect double rainbow. I couldn’t resist an iPhone snap or three. Also irresistible: the early morning sunlight, which had cast everything—especially the big white radar domes among the palm trees—in a weirdly scenic sci-fi hue.
Immediately upon entering the security-checkpoint building, I was intercepted by a fat, 40-ish, bearded white guy in glasses, black boots, black shorts, and a white collared shirt.
“Sir, you’ve been spotted.”
He took my passport and told me to wait while the other ferryites breezed through the gate. Five minutes later, I was summoned by an armed detective (short, goateed, Hispanic-looking) in black boots, black shorts, and a blue collared shirt. He looked serious as he flashed his badge and introduced himself before prodding me into a small side room, where he posed several questions. I showed him my phone snaps and erased them while he watched carefully.
“I was told you also used a high-resolution camera.”
The Canon RP was unsheathed, and as he squinted at its LCD screen, I scrolled through the photos, deleting “everything with the domes,” the Worthy, the Mystic (a tugboat), the sunrise, the dock, even the puffy white clouds above.
“Are these civilian sailboats?” I asked before nixing images of the anchorage.
“Hopefully.”
He grinned and winked once.
I mentioned my mild erstwhile obsession over the Kwajalein/Vandenberg Space Force Base missile-testing connection per proximity in my ex-home county of Santa Barbara.
“Years ago, I wrote about Vandenberg,” I said.
“People surf there?”
“Sort of.”
“Are you going to write about Kwajalein?”
“Sort of.”
He grinned again. No wink.
“Go ahead and wait with the others. I’ll be out shortly.”
I was hungry. The checkpoint room was sparse and charmless, with a broken ATM and two old vending machines accepting $1 bills for a bad selection of snacks and candy. The red-tiled American Eatery was closed and had been for months due to staffing issues, which seemed odd considering the many Americans and Ebeyeans capable of working there.
Large windows granted sunlight and a view of coconut trees. Trucks rumbled past, hauling Matson containers from the Kyowa Stork. Ebeyeans waiting for the flight drowsed on the hard benches, tended to infants, stared at phones, coughed into their hands, drank Coke, crunched on Cheetos.
The detective reappeared and requested my contact info.
“You won’t be getting anything in the mail,” he said. “This is just to document that I talked to you.”
“Will I be allowed back?”
He laughed. “Sure. There are only two ways in and out: airport or this dock. Everything is extremely controlled.”
“What kind of real security issues have you had?”
“There’s a saying that if one talks about security issues, one wouldn’t be in the security business.”
He handed me my passport, which had been scanned, scrutinized, filed. Again I apologized, pleading ignorance, insisting I was pro-security, pro-military, pro-this and pro-that.
“You’re free to proceed to the terminal,” he said.
At the security-office counter, a Marshallese staffer checked me in and said I was the only American departing. She gave me a green Fly Out Pass (no shopping or food-court privileges) with an “approved route” map.
“The other passengers are foreigners,” she said, “but you may walk to the terminal. They will be escorted by bus.”
“Foreigners? Aren’t they Marshallese?”
“Yes.”
“My bag is heavy. I’ll take the bus too. Can we get some local food anywhere?”
“You can, sir, but the other passengers cannot.”
“Marshallese food?”
“Yes. Subway and Burger King open at eleven.”
Jackson was deeply stoned, sucking his red teeth and spitting red betel-nut saliva. A stray drip of drool drooped like a pendant from his black beard. Half his visage was blanked by big sunglasses and a blue bucket hat. His green Reebok shirt suggested an ample belly. His lack of chat and the beat-up panga suggested he was not a tourist’s glad-hander. Fine with me, the only tourist on Kosrae.
Beneath the day’s gray, an offshore wind was forecast. Yet a deplorable onshore breeze fluffed the Pacific. The tide was too low, but inconsistent head-high groundswell sets popped over the corals of the passes, connected spiritually and physically to freshwater swamp forest and mountain ridges. This was the holy 400-acre preserve called Yela Valley, home to the world’s largest and most intact stand of ka (Terminalia carolinensis), a tree endemic only here and on neighboring Pohnpei.
“Wanna go see?” Jackson asked softly.
We had time to kill, and, in a boat, this was my chance—Yela Valley would forever be roadless. Twenty years ago, there were talks of tying it to the rest of Kosrae, since three-quarters of the isle, a verdant volcanic speck, was linked only by a vein of potholes. Punching a new road above, below, or through the valley proved technically and environmentally futile. Instead, a conservation easement was born, and, for financial compensation, the areal landowners (10 families) happily chose to leave their ancestral dirt undisturbed. Access would remain aquatic.
The panga slid us slowly from the pass into the tawny shallow estuary of the Yela River, a small, clear stream that through millennia had carved the pass itself.
“Ever felled a ka?” I asked.
“Yes. Usually, we use it for lumbers. In the past, it was use for canoe. It’s a really good wood.”
The air was markedly cooler mere minutes from the ocean’s open-air theater. We approached a thatched and mildewed one-room “eco lodge” and its placard and boardwalk, all results of the conservation ink. Then, after slinking deeper into the pure greens of the tropical rainforest,
Jackson stopped the boat. We hopped out. His feet sloshed loudly as he dragged it up onto a tongue of bare sand. Suddenly, with the outboard motor now off, an immense and heady hush enveloped the scene. Unseen birds chirped and cooed. I did a 360: ferns, palms, vines, breadfruit.
“Where are the ka?” I asked.
“Follow me.”
We stepped across the moist, healthy understory before finally facing the birdy, sun-dappled dell. The mossy, fin-like buttress roots of the ka were big enough to flank an adult human.
Trunks bristled with epiphytic plants. High above, the crowns appeared as huge green umbrellas.
“Maybe should be named umbrella tree, eh?” Jackson said, sprinkling lime powder onto another betel nut, five bucks for a bag of 20, which he chewed daily, a weekly $35 habit.
“You want one?”
“Please.”
Momentarily came the red teeth/red spit and instant change of head.
“What nuts are these?” I asked, woozily looking down at the scattered thumb-size brown spheroids resembling cacao seeds. Some were bright green and identical to betel.
“From the ka. Green ones just fell from the tree. Brown ones are ripe, best now for eating.”
With a rock against another rock, he bent down to split one open.
“Here. Crunchy and tasty like peanut.”
I wished for a whole sack of ka nuts instead of the Cool Ranch Doritos and Taiwanese “nutrition biscuits” I’d brought for surf sustenance.
During our ka admiration and betel inebriation, the sun killed the clouds. The wind had flipped. The estuary’s rising water was to free the panga from its berth. Quickly, we pushed off and puttered back toward the ocean.
Emerging from the mangroves, I felt like the quite possibly also stoned Yates brothers at the start of Forgotten Island of Santosha, upon a river exiting rainforest, single-fins lashed to their outrigger canoe and, indeed, happily exhaling with the sight of promise: lines of white along a distant reef.
A perfect wave—2 miles offshore Micronesia’s definitive “garden isle”—was for 35 years a secret held near and dear to the Pacific cognoscenti. But a surf camp launched in November 2004, and the industry began pimping Palikir Pass. Soon, the seldom-ridden right-hander was thrust into the surf world’s eye.
The camp was and is Pohnpei Surf Club (PSC). Serendipitously that same month, I witnessed PSC’s first Palikir media trip, for Tracks. Five years later, I delivered to The Surfer’s Journal a reportage titled “The Taking of Pohnpei.” The piece ran 26 pages, and my contempt—based on historical outings and subsequent crowdings of similarly remote tropical waves—was masked thinly. But history, as it turned out, does not always repeat.
PSC was largely the brainchild of Allois Malfitani, now 63, a relaxed and convivial goofyfoot who hailed from Florianópolis in a previous life.
“Your hair is a lot whiter, eh?” he said, smiling at me. “If I saw you in the street, I wouldn’t know who you are.”
We stood in the warm orange slant of late-day sunshine outside Mangrove Bay Hotel, a two-story waterfront clutch of comfortably modern accommodations and offices—since 2014, the home of PSC. Adjacent was a sushi bar and a tidy little marina where Allois stashed his three boats. He employed a dedicated and beloved Pohnpeian staff. His clientele had morphed from all surfers in autumn through winter to few surfers overall meshed with a somewhat steady stream of scuba divers from across the globe.
“Divers come at 8 or 9 a.m. and leave at 1 p.m.,” he said. “I don’t have to talk to them ever again.” He laughed. “Surfers, on the other hand, want to go at 6 a.m., come back for lunch, go out again, come back at 7. Other people are easier to deal with. But I like surfers—I’m a surfer.”
He’d surfed a lot on Oahu’s North Shore, where eight years were burned running a busy hostel. In 2000, he boarded the Island Hopper and, after first visiting Kosrae, landed on what would become his home.
“Before that first trip here, I thought, ‘It could be better than Hawaii. Maybe there’s a little surf community.’ Well, 24 years have passed. It’s quieter now than ever since I started PSC. What difference do you see compared to the time you came 20 years ago?”
“No surfers,” I said.
“Yeah. Nobody. It’s dead. Well, there’s one guy who lives here. I haven’t seen him in forever. And there’s another guy, Buzz, who moved from Maui. He surfs a lot. And there’s one other guy, Zenn, from Oahu, who’s living here part-time. Pohnpei is not for everyone. Goes flat for months. Every summer I wonder, ‘Will I ever surf again?’”
Since November 2004, millions of winter waves have hucked over Palikir’s pristine coral. Hundreds of humans, Tom Curren to Joe Blow, have ridden them.
“Those first few seasons, man—so perfect,” Allois said.
And rare. A steep financial risk in 2004, PSC’s arc was at once unprecedented and unpredictable, based, as it always would be, upon affordability (e.g., insanely high airfare) and reliable accessibility versus the creatively cruel whims of nature. Which, of course, will always bat last.
Eventually, his website included a quasi disclaimer: “Pohnpei isn’t always 8 to 10 feet with top-to-bottom barrels and pro-level conditions, like you might see in surf magazines. Those epic days do happen—usually 2 to 5 times per season—and they’re unforgettable. But most of the time, Pohnpei offers more manageable, high-quality surf that suits a wider range of surfers.”
“Yeah, those early times were busy,” he continued. “And then there was the other surf camp. It was cheaper. Different customers. But it’s still closed after COVID-19. When I reopened, I booked a small group and it felt…right. I thought maybe I’d just start charging more money for fewer guests. So that’s what I’m doing. And the people who do come are happy.”
Ah, the feared surf camp: soiling of a paradise extant. Mitigation—time, in this case—actually worked.
Despite Palikir’s deviations, since 2004 Allois has facilitated a lot of happiness for a lot of surfers. Which is all that matters, really. There’s been no collateral damage. Quite the contrary. Happiness is not a secret meant to be kept.
Pete was a friendly divemaster who, per accent, I took to be a South African but was instead a white Zimbabwean living in Auckland. He was gray-bearded, energized, enthusiastic. This was his 49th visit to Chuuk. Clearly, he lived for scuba. His 11-day Chuuk Lagoon dive trips were often fully booked two years in advance at US$4,000 per head.
“Tomorrow, I’ve got 38 people coming,” he said over the drone of a compressor filling nitrox tanks behind us. We were in morning shade on the lagoon island of Weno outside the venerable Blue Lagoon Dive Shop at Blue Lagoon Resort. Both were Chuukese-owned and existed only via death and destruction.
Pete studied a whiteboard of his guests’ names. “They’re from America, Canada, England, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and so forth. I’ve got another 38 coming in on the 15th. I’m assuming you realize this is one of the world’s best wreck-dive sites.”
Cue Operation Hailstone. For most of World War II, Chuuk Lagoon (aka Truk Lagoon) was a major Japanese naval base, which made it a major target for the Allies, specifically the United States, which in two days annihilated the entire Imperial fleet of more than 100 ships, submarines, and planes, which then littered the lagoon’s vast sandy floor. This “litter” launched Chuuk’s tourism industry, notably after the world saw “The Lagoon of Lost Ships,” a 1971 episode from the documentary TV series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.
“Why else might people visit?” I asked Pete.
“No idea, mate.”
“Where is the world’s absolute best wreck-diving?”
“Likely in the Marshalls at Bikini Atoll, but it only has warships and subs. Slightly radioactive. And they are deep. Here, the deepest ship is 70 meters, which is 230 feet, but they mainly run about 100 to 130 feet down. There are a lot of wrecks very close to one another, so it’s convenient. By the way, you’re the first surfer I’ve ever seen here.”
I was not.
“Some guys came here about seven or eight years ago, but they were unlucky,” said Tryvin, the dive shop’s manager, referring to Australian photographer Simon Williams’ hopeful trip for Tracks magazine.
“Lots of potential, but each spot wasn’t quite right,” Williams had told me. “And the lagoon is so big. Massive mission. We stayed out on an island a couple of nights. Glad I went. Don’t know if I’d go back.”
Asher Pacey was one of his subjects.
“A few small waves, but not great,” Asher told me when I queried him. “One pass was pretty cool, but a shitload of current.”
That was to be expected from any cleft in a thin spool of coral, shaped like a humphead wrasse head, cupping 820 square miles of lagoon.
All said, conversely, I would get lucky. At Asher’s same pass, normally windswept, I enjoyed a multiday feast of fast, clean walls, chest-high to a couple feet overhead. Had the swell direction skewed less parallel to the reef, wrapping more, it could have been a world-class wave.
“Did they do any diving?” Pete asked Tryvin of Williams’ expedition.
“No.”
“Do you dive, Michael?” Pete asked me.
“No. Snorkel.”
Pete laughed.
“I’m very interested to see how you get on out there,” he said. “Who knows? You might find a unique break which puts Chuuk on the map. You’ve got to speculate to accumulate, eh?”
As he mulled over the whiteboard, I patiently awaited my boat ride to a possibly rideable stretch of barrier reef 11 miles out from the shop. I’d also been studying maps of passes 15 to 20 lagoon miles away.
“Have you got a sat phone?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t the boat drivers have radios or cell phones?”
“There’s zero signal out there. We’ll just come looking for you in a couple days. Maybe this is a good place to die?”
He laughed again.
Still clutching bones, the lagoon’s wrecks are war graves strangely still undesignated as such by Chuuk, America, or Japan itself. Divers are free to photograph and fondle these human remains.
A good place to die? I noticed a few Japanese names on the whiteboard and thought, Maybe you should ask them.
“You know what Guam stands for, right?”
I’d just palmed some cash to Fred, my taxi driver to the rental-car office.
“No,” I said.
“Give Us American Money.”
We both laughed because it was true. Or was it?
A muggy, rainy Sunday morning “where America’s day begins,” as the saying goes. Guam lies west of the international date line, is Micronesia’s largest island (212 square miles), and is very strategically placed. The US Department of Defense owns 25 percent of the joint, overseeing annexes and installations, including Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam, and the recently reborn Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz.
Fred was perhaps 60, chatty, possibly of Filipino or Chamorro (native Guamanian) descent, wearing black shorts and a blue polo shirt. In his red cig-fumed sedan, we crept across the aging gray blocks of Tamuning—a mostly industrial hive on the outskirts of Hagåtña, wedged between the airport and Tumon Bay, Guam’s version of Waikiki. Often gridlocked, the lanes were empty.
“I love this island,” he said. “It’s warm weather every day. You get a little bit of rain like this, but that’s good. Everybody stays inside. Less headache, less traffic. They don’t like to drive in the rain. I don’t know why. I’m also a truck driver, so it’s better they just stay away from the roads.”
“What sucks about Guam?”
“It’s expensive as hell. Gas is $5.89 a gallon. Also, I don’t like what the local senators are doing to our land, man.”
“What are they doing?”
“They using California’s laws here. You know, California is a big damn place. And you just put the San Francisco laws here. I tell them, ‘Make your own laws, man.’”
He lit a cigarette.
The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer was rumbling back toward Pearl Harbor and then on to its home port at Naval Base San Diego, where it would disgorge its Camp Pendleton–based 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. On Guam they’d drilled with the US 7th Fleet, the Navy’s largest forward-deployed force, which, since 1943, “routinely interacts with allies and partners to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” according to the Fleet’s website.
“By the way, man, you are lucky,” Fred continued, blowing smoke out the window. “No rental cars anywhere yesterday. The Marines rented everything. Your timing today is perfect, man. Where you from?”
“I live in Oregon.”
“Oh, I like Oregon. I always go to Portland. Nice place. Lots of islanders there. What are you doing here?”
“I’m writing about the Island Hopper. Guam is its last stop. I might try to surf.”
“Surf? Yeah, I seen them surfers around. I think first people to surf here were from the American military, eh?”
“I believe so. Do Guamanians approve of the military here?”
“We have no choice, man. They don’t bother us. They’re very good. In the 1990s, I was in the Navy. If Guam was not the US, man, we’d be owned by the Japanese. We don’t want that. No. They tortured our ancestors, man. My grandma and all. Yeah, World War II was pretty bad here. That’s why I joined the Navy and I fought for my country in the Persian Gulf. I paid those World War II troops back. They saved us, man.”
Later that week, my rental car wheeling down Guam’s Highway 1 into the furthering squally bluey-gray of afternoon, I noticed the wind was howling offshore—straight out across the great Philippine Sea toward Taiwan, just thrashed by Typhoon Kong-rey, the worst storm to hit that island in 30 years. For much of the West Pacific, Kong-rey fueled a proper northwest swell, perhaps the season’s best.
The offshores smelled of passion fruit. Kong-rey undulations arrived on repeat. I found a reef and paddled out. Between waves, I floated in water so frighteningly clear and shallow that it emerged in a conversation I’d later have with a local surfer named Pascual inside Lotus Surf Shop.
“I was born on Midway Island,” he said, “but my mom is from here. She met my dad in the Navy when he got stationed on Guam as a young sailor. Then we got transferred to Midway Island. We came back when I was 11. Been here ever since.”
In the early 1990s, Pascual was a Continental Micronesia flight attendant.
The offshores smelled of passion fruit. Typhoon undulations arrived
on repeat. I found a reef and paddled out.
“Did you surf Palikir?” he asked when he learned of my island-hopping. “Man, surfers here kept that wave a secret for a long time. They’d been surfing it since the ’70s. When we’d come in for landing at Pohnpei, we’d see that frickin’ right-hander. I just knew it was the one.”
One of the pilots was a surfer named Buzz. Pascual recalled one trip east in a regular Boeing 727-200, which required a minimum of three flight attendants. On the way back west, however, Buzz captained a 727-100C, also known as a Combi, one of Continental Micronesia’s uniquely convertible half-cargo/half-passenger planes.
“For that, Buzz only needed two flight attendants, but we had three on the crew,” Pascual told me. “So he asked, ‘Hey, Pascual, do you want to sit in the cockpit for takeoff and landing at all the islands?’ Majuro was the scariest if you were a passenger because when you’re landing, you’re seeing just the ocean on both sides. You’re thinking, ‘Holy shit, we’re gonna ditch!’ And then suddenly, boom, you’d see the runway.”
“You learned how to surf here?” I asked.
“Yup. It’s scary because it’s so shallow. The waves are really fast and with really steep drops. Since our water is crystal clear, you see all the coral. And it’s nasty. So we always tell the kids, ‘Just look at the wave. Don’t look at the coral! Because it’s going to freak you out.’”
He laughed.
“Don’t look down, man!”
The next morning, ascending and soaring toward HNL, I gazed back at the great green hills that defined much of Guam. And I thought, It’s impossible to not look down. Especially on the Island Hopper.
–
Michael H. Kew is the author of Xanatollu—Surfing the United Airlines Island Hopper (Spruce Coast Press), from which this article has been adapted. Learn more about the book here.
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