Roughly 50 years ago, Vissla CEO and founder Paul Naude made surfboards. In the 1970s, the South African was a contemporary of Shaun Tomson and even enjoyed a stint as a professional surfer. He proved adept on the North Shore of Oahu, winning the 1975 Smirnoff Amateur at Sunset Beach, then became the South African national champion the following year.
Though Naude had his head in a lot of corporate board meetings these days, he’s still rooted in a love of surfing in all its various forms. The list of people Vissla backs isn’t limited to CT hackers on 6-foot sleds; It’s full of creatives, filmers and shapers like Donald Brink, Derrick Disney, Thomas Campbell, Travis Reynolds and Danny Hess.
Vissla just dropped a new flick Googles by Darcy Ward featuring young thoroughbreds Toby Mossop and Louie Hynd in various waves (and some very good Indonesian barrels) with cameos from Liam O’Brien, Matthew McGillivray, and Voltaire Sora. It’s upbeat, and energetic and will make you want to bury a rail.
Frame: Vissla
But the frenetic nature of the edit masks the work required to find quality waves. As Hynd shared in a journal entry from the trip, the crew underwent a haphazard and sleep-deprived journey to get from the Gold Coast to Sumatra. Plane, ferry and a multi-hour taxi ride eventually got them to their accommodation 38 hours after the first flight. Then they woke up at 4:30 a.m. to check the surf. With the foray looking promising, they decided to extend their trip.
Frame: Vissla
“The following week was a wild goose chase,” Hynd wrote. “Countless hours were spent driving up and down the coast hunting for waves. When you’ve got your sights heavily set on 6-foot pits, you can tend to start seeing the ocean through the lens of ‘Indo goggles’. The indo goggles tend to alter your perspective toward the pessimistic edge. The shrouded vision clears once you hit the water and you come back to reality, realizing how fun the waves in front you are. We lucked into a cracker day at the beach break. An uncrowded lineup with glassy 4-foot peaks barrelling left and right. It was the quintessential surfing dream. Splitting the peak with your mate. Low risk, high fun. Tubes in the morning then ramps once the wind hit.”
Paul Naude would be proud.
Related: Watch: “Traveling Through a Dream” in Under-Explored Indonesia