Rip Curl

What do four of surfing's top females do when they're ripped from their busy tour schedule and put on a boat in paradise for a couple of weeks? They get ridiculous: They laugh. Surf perfect waves carelessly. Have fierce fishing competitions. Snorkel. Bronze on the beach. And, of course, laugh a lot more. In other words, they just become normal girls in the absence of the bright lights, glamor and hype -- which at the end of the day, is what they love being the most. Music: The Day Summer Fell - The Sand Pebbles Music: Can't You Smell Me Burning - The Maladies

Stephanie Gilmore is only 22 years old and she's already a legend. Her paws are immortalized in Huntington Beach's Surfing Walk of Fame. She is officially an icon to every female surfer on the planet. And not surprisingly, she's rubbed off on Alana, Bethany and Tyler quite a bit lately. But in the close quarters of the Quest 1, everyone begins to become a piece of each other. And thank God for that, or Glitter and the Shaman would have never been created... Music: Funky Zen Groove - Tack Fu Music: Chakra Superstar - The Winston Giles Orchestra Music: The Day Summer Fell - The Sand Pebbles

Everyone's drunk. Been drinking beers since noon, when the storm came and blew everything to shit. There's nothing else to do. Like Chapter 2, Chapter 3 has been a battle with the elements, therefore a battle with an excess of downtime. But these boys are veterans of this sort of dance with Indo; they know how and when to let loose. Tonight is mortals night: just a few dozen beers, some poker, and some laughs. Tomorrow is for gladiators. Swell's on the rise.

When the doctors got done cutting out the 3/4 of staph-infected skull in Timmy's head in December, 2005, they said he would be a vegetable. They were very, very wrong. Today, Timmy is directing Albert Taylor over to the left he discovered almost 10 years ago. The memories flood back as if they were yesterday's. Bruno, Brady and Dillon watch the left cautiously as it grinds like lightning over a few inches of reef. Timmy grabs his board and turns to the boys: "We're out there!" he shouts, then jumps overboard. He's not wearing his helmet. He shouldn't even be here. Music: Simple Game - Seth Sentry

On your average Mentawais boat trip these days, you're at sea for 10 nights and you cover about 300 miles. In those 300 miles, you're likely to check around 13 spots. So are about 16 other surfers at the exact same time. And more often than you would think, one or two of those other surfers are the same guys you see out at your local beachbreak on Saturday mornings. That's the reality in modern Mentawais. Unless, of course, you blow life off and check out for six months on a boat. Then you'll see there's still hope floating out there. Music: Tear The Fences Down - Eulogies Music: 3X - aheadphonehome

On your standard 2-week boat trip, land is just an intangible film reel of white sand, coconut palms and distant mountains flickering on by. On your standard boat trip, you pass by at least one perfect wave a day because it's just too difficult to reach by boat under such cramped time constraints. On your standard boat trip, it's real easy to forget what you're missing over there on shore. Hence the beauty of this mission. On land or off, there are no rules. Every wave is important, just as every person and place along the way is too. Music: The Royal We - Silversun Pickups

Chalk one up for Tin Boat. It won't be the last. It's been a grueling leg of Tip 2 Tip for Brady, Garut and Ricardo: the weather, the treks overland... the waiting. As the Quest 1 sits in deeper water, licking her wounds after copping a pounding across the Lombok Strait and on westward, Albert zings Tin Boat into every tight corner, snooping and peeking, hoping and wishing. And then he's on the radio, telling the boys the weird, but good, news. It sure don't look like Indo, but... oh, it's Indo. Music: Golden Halo, by PVT

On average, 2,478 millimeters (or 98 inches) of rain dumps on the lowlands of Indonesia per year. From April to October, it's hotter, rains more frequently, and the ocean is angrier. That's boat trip season. And though on any given day from one end of Indo to other, an unholy amount of perfect waves are unfolding all by their lonesome, so too is foul weather and rough seas. But this crew has been down this road before -- and they know just how nice Indo can be after one of her more moody days.

Indonesia's first generation of traveling surfers were men in search of tubes and solitude. Nowhere else in the world did waves grind away with such sustained, balmy, vacant perfection. Back then Indo was the high performance surfer's wet dream and unequivocal escape. Well... generations change; rules get re-written. Today, the air is as psychedelic as the green room. Kuta as electric as a LA nightclub. Yet still, Indo is the ultimate surf park for those uninterested in rulebooks. There's just more noise now.

Indonesia stretches for 2,600 miles from tip to tip. The United States stretches about 2,500. Yet nearly all of Indo is surfable territory, not cornfields and hunting clubs. On a boat trip concerned with such ludicrous distances, heavy exploration is inevitable. And so is downtime. The average teenager's attention span is about 2 minutes... if they're lucky. You can see the sort of challenge the captain of a boat full of psyching adolescents is facing here. Just another day on the job.

From Los Angeles to Denpasar, it takes around 30 hours of air travel endurance. Even worse, from Rio de Janeiro to Denpasar, you're looking at 44 hours. If you're lucky enough to be Australian, grueling ocean crossings and nearly 2 days of lost surf time aren't an issue. But after the drive to the boat and the run out to sea, the reality is outer-Indo is still a journey for even its closest neighbors. This is the price tag hanging from every flawless wave and castaway landscape... a fee, however, that's gladly paid.

Tip 2 Tip is a 6-month quest on the Infinite Search, stretching from one end of the Indonesia Archipelago to the other. It's a journey about discovery, adventure, adversity and the people who share the laughs along the way. From perfect waves to unlocked mysteries, feral pirates to cabin fever, this voyage promises it all - minus a final destination.

It's tough to define Owen Wright with limited space, so we happily sit back and let his surfing fo the talking. The kid rips and is the ultimate searcher - always first in the lineup and ready for anything...

Dean Brady is a man mountain and his surfing is to match. Big turns, big airs and big moves... Stand aside!

Balinese boy Garut Widiarta is making his mark as Indonesia's most high profile surfer. Explosive, high-intensity surfing is what he delivers, but fun is the name of the game.