Cooper Does Indo.

Waves recently commissioned a trip to Indo with some of Australia’s best under-16 surfers. Among the surfers was Narrabeen lad and Waves’ new favourite micro cutlet, Cooper Chapman. Cooper is competent on a surfboard and doesn’t bang out a bad tale (a rare trait for a pro surfer). He and friend Beau Forster also run a pretty cool little blog aptly titled Cooper And Beau Blog and he beat Slater in the Boost Airshow earlier this year. Anyway, back to Indo. Cooper was there recently with some pretty good surfers. They spent a week in the Latitude Zero Resort in the Telo Islands and a week on the Mangalui sailing around the Ments. Here is Cooper’s diary from the land camp. The rest of the boys and their tales will feature in an upcoming issue of Waves.

Day One.

Today started with an eight-hour plane ride to Kuala Lumpur – not fun at all. I was stung $135 in excess, there was no TV and the food on the plane was expensive. We started to see some success when we got to Malaysia and the boards were put into storage. Then straight to the Concord hotel for a quick 24 hour stop over.

Creed – punk steez.

Day Two.

We found little punk rocker and West Aus legend Creed McTaggart at the airport and reminisced with him about our previous night on our two-hour flight to Padang. There were some bad-ass lines at the immigration office that lengthened our afternoon, but eventually we got a good sleep at a house in Padang (difficult to sleep with Creed’s death metal blaring all night though).

Mitch Parko – kid has been watching his older cousin.

Day Three.

We got an early morning wake up to get straight to Padang airport for our charter flight. I kid you not, this was the most intense and scariest thing any of us boys had ever done. The plane was smaller then an Australian public bus and the pilot was just sitting five-feet away from you with no door keeping him separate from us, also the luggage was piled up next to us. When we landed we ventured on down the small dirt track to reach our next destination, the Latitude Zero boat was waiting for us to take us to the resort. A 45-minute boat ride later, we came around a small corner only to see a tropical paradise, hidden behind some intense jungle and bushland terrain. Boards were quickly unpacked, rooms were allocated and we scrambled and got our froth on the go for a surf. First up, we came across a small beachie to start the trip, the swell was pretty flat (1-2 foot), but we just needed to get wet after some exhausting travelling. On the way home we watched Soli and Mitch trawl for fish and fail. 30 minutes was all it took until they threw in the towel. We realised how pristine and exotic the water was on the way back to the land camp and decided we would give wakeboarding a try, just because the surf was so small. A few pretty hilarious moves went down – Mitch’s fall-off to somehow regain and Creed’s goat-boating abilities were just some of the highlights. To finish the day, Soli and I decided to put the ocean to use yet again and go for a quick snorkel on sundown, but to our disbelief we didn’t even see a fish. Lastly, the most outrageous thing that happened today involved the loan ginger of the trip Eli Steele, a pretty inexperienced traveller. He was unfortunate to lose his passport, wallet and other travel documents. He got into the airport and said, “Oh shit, I don’t have my travel wallet.” Shockingly, he seemed to be the most calm about it. All of us were freaking out about it and trying to work out the best solution for his problem, but he is just psyched to surf. I don’t think he realised he was up shit creek at that moment.

Cooper – In Oz, not Indo.

Day Four.

The passport had been found in a car in Padang. Eli was possibly the luckiest man on the island at the moment. Anyway, day four was action packed. We found some little peaks and hit them hard. Eli started with the wave of the day, got barrelled, but no cameras were set up yet. Spewing. The session was a long one, three hours I think. A few mental airs went down – Mitchy was pulling air reverses every wave, Creed was just going mental and I did a few roundhouses. From there, we headed further south to check Monkeys and Lovehearts. It looked really small at Monkeys when we pulled up, but I was keen to surf over some reef. I jumped off alone and caught a few solo runners. Not long after, all the boys came out and I got swamped. The wave was real small, but so rippable and I had some good little sections to play with. Whilst surfing we nearly got drilled by a storm, so we flurried to the boat and squirmed on board to get back to the resort. After a long day and a lot of sunburn all I wanted to do was relax, but all the boys went fishing. Luckily for me it was another failure. No one caught any fish. Everybody looked forward to getting barrelled, so I got some sleep for what looks to be another big day tomorrow.

Eli – likes to boost…and lose passports.

Day Five.

6 am. I was awake for an early brekky with Swilly (Waves photog). All the boys slept in until I ran upstairs telling them it was six-foot and pumping. They all arose and ran to see Swilly, only to hear the disappointment of the swell still being flat. We still went on with the day. We had quick stop at Monkeys to find no waves whatsoever and then back around to the beachie to have a little splash. It was pretty fun, but a little bit inconsistent and fast. Back around the corner to check Monkeys again, but there was still no sign of waves, so we found a little sand island that was about five metres wide, surrounded by reef and with a weird wave breaking the whole way around it. When we got back to Latitude Zero we went  through some gruelling interviews with PJ (filmer). The boys went out to find some fish again. They were unsuccessful. Some mad pool games and tasty tucker finished out the day. We were told swell was supposed to be around the corner.

Soli Bailey – shack hunt.

Day Six.

5am. Earliest morning yet. We could hear that the swell had risen and all we had to do was wait until sunrise to see how much. It was triple the size of yesterday, so we were all frothing. We had a quick brekky and then straight into the boat to speed across to Rangas. To our disbelief it was only two-foot. We saw a few little barrels and couldn’t resist. We bailed out there to scramble into our first tubes of the trip. It was small, but there was some tube time ticking over. There was alot of time between sets, but were pretty fun when they arrived. From there we decided to head around to Pinnacles to try and find a bit more swell. When we arrived it definitely looked bigger but there wasn’t all that much shape to it. Mitchy had to drop the kids off, so we all quickly got out there before he’s faeces drifted to close to us. The wind died off and the session turned out to be pretty fun, we were all stoked to get a bit of power under our feet, as it was a solid four-five foot. Both Swill and PJ nailed some cool shots. On the way back to the resort, we stoped of at Rangas again and saw the best set of the day. We scrambled out there and got a few sick little tubes, but the tide killed it and we couldn’t handle waiting half an hour for sets. We bailed back home for lunch and a cruisey arvo of hybernation.

Day Seven.

5am, yet another rainy morning, but we sill thought we would head south and try find some waves to shoot. We had the bumpiest and scariest boat ride to get there, the wind was howling and the rain was pouring. The swell was making us get air and it was not fun landing and getting winded. Although we all felt sick we paddled out Monkeys as soon as we got there because there was a good three-foot of swell pushing through. It was probably the best session we have had so far on the trip as there were some crazy sections and some really walley waves. After four hours of surfing we had to wait for the storm to pass to start our bumpy and cold journey back to the camp. At some stages on the way home we were colder than a winters day at home, you would have never guessed we were in the tropics. Finally, after a one and a half hour boat trip, we made it home – wet and cold – straight into the showers for a long rinse off. A long afternoon was filled with some movies and a visit from the Rip Curl boat. I skip dinner and get a good night sleep.

Cooper – slice.

Day Eight.

One word can describe this day for me: sickness. I woke up with a sore tummy and then destroyed the toilet before trying to surf.  I ended up back in bed. That was the story of my day. I felt even worse when I heard the boys got fun waves that afternoon at Monkeys. Oh well I smashed two full seasons of Entourage, so at least I did something. Goodnight.

Day Nine.

The morning started with some well-earned sleep. We all waddled down to breakfast around 7.30 and saw a glimmer of sunlight and got some lifestyle shots to please the sponsors. Straight from there we hit Pinnacles, we surfed for about half an hour before I had a little bit of a scare. I did a turn on an inside drainer and got sucked over the falls. I thought I was sweet, then I started hitting some pretty shallow and sharp reef. A few bumps to the feet and I was fine but then under the second wave of the set I got dragged again, my leggie was constricted around the reef and I was stuck underwater with nowhere to go, as I was reaching for my leggie to tear it off it snapped and I pushed to swim up. On the way up I hit my head on some reef, I finally made it to the top and went into survival mode and swam into the channel. Looking back at it I was really lucky my leggie snapped or I could have been stuck under there for longer being rag dolled on the reef, also it was lucky I didn’t hit my head to hard I just came out with a minor cut and a few gashes on my feet. After that, we surfed for another hour and then came home to utilise the sunlight to its maximum potential. We all got some more lifestyle shots and I cleaned up my battle wounds with some fresh limes – not a good feeling, but it beats infection. Then we had a quiet afternoon filled with Entourage and packing for our changeover onto the boat element of the trip (Cooper’s boat tale will come tomorrow).

All photos by the marvelous and magnificent Simon “Swilly” Williams.

Tags: Cooper Chapman