ABOVE: Relaxing at the resort. You’re welcome to have a few drinks here, but not outside on the islands. RIGHT: Relaxing on the boat... Life’s looking pretty good. Photos supplied by Alyson 32 jul/aug 20<strong>12</strong> “No… It was all good,” Alyson says with a big smile. “There were only five of us surfers on the boat and we were all individuals. There were no groups, I wasn’t on the outer and everyone was very sociable. It was a perfect mix. I was the only girl surfer, but there were two other girls as part of the crew. They were stoked as well to have a girl surfer on board.” Before she left there were plenty of warnings and much concern from family and friends about this ‘going on a surf trip with a bunch of blokes thing’, including being handed a copy of Caught Inside on DVD to prepare her for the worst. But fortunately, due to the busy life as chef at Marcoola Beach coffee shop, Bulli, and spending all her spare time in the water training for the trip, Alyson never got around to seeing “The Bull” lose it and as such, was just unbelievably excited about a trip to paradise instead. (Not sure what we mean? Watch Caught Inside - seriously - and check out our interview with Ben Oxenbould in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of smorgasboarder.) The crew obviously saw the funny side of the feature film though and made sure to pop the movie into the DVD player on board. “It was so frustrating, watching people not taking their lives into their own hands!” Alyson laughs… “We were shouting at the screen “Just do something! Hit him!” “Yes, there are bogan freaks among us,” Alyson concedes, but was happy to report that there were none on board with her. And as it turns out, the surf conditions were as friendly as the people on board. “There are sections that are crazy shallow, but it wasn’t dangerous. Even the casual surfers had fun. “We had two or three surfs a day, and I must have got 30 or 40 waves a session. I’m a bit of a groveller, so I just trawled around to get everything I could.” With 1,192 islands in a chain of 26 atolls over 90,000 square kilometers there would be plenty trawling choice in this Indian Ocean wave paradise. The reefs that provide the water funland are made up of coral perched on top of a 960km long undersea ridge that runs north to south off the Indian Lakshadweep islands, South- West of Sri Lanka and India. Perfect waves in tropical water is a few degrees up on the thermometer from how it all started for Alyson though, growing up in Victoria and enjoying her first surfing experiences on the Mornington Peninsula. “I probably started surfing at around <strong>12</strong>, but only once or twice a year,. Being in Melbourne. It was so cold and I wasn’t very good, but every year we came up to Noosa for family holidays and stayed at the Sunshine Beach caravan park, which was great.
SURFING PICS: A choice of lefts and rights were on offer for the entire trip, all captured by the on-board photographer, Jade. BEHIND THE SCENES: What’s better than a surf trip with proof? Here’s Liquid Destination photographer, Jade, hard at work capturing those magic moments. jul/aug 20<strong>12</strong> 33