By Patrice Geraghty

My brother Pascal had just turned 30-years old. We went to the Mentawais aboard the Nusa Dewata to celebrate with Pascal's fiancee and three of his friends. The Dewata is a sick little boat for a small group. It only accommodates six people. I highly recommend her: The food was great, the boat clean and comfortable. Plus Jake Thompson is the biggest frother of a surf guide in the islands.

These photos document Pascal's birthday present. You can't buy this stuff with money though, the currency is skin and the reef doesn't respond to any desperate bargaining pleas. We surfed this left although the swell had a bit too much west in it, making the end section angry.

It's a good wave but perhaps not the most user friendly. It's tricky. It jacks and bends hard. And it's heavy...there's no real exit. It's kind of a closeout, but the potential is there to get a crazy deep barrel and make it. In the first sequence you can see Pascal rides through some impossible sections, travelling super deep before getting squashed. The wave decided not to let him out. 

There are three sections to the wave. The first two are pretty makeable. The third very rarely is though. Ninety nine percent of the time the third section squashes you, as a hefty closeout bends in to push you onto the reef. So the options are, a) squeeze out the doggy door onto a barely wet platform of reef, or b) hit the eject button, jump off and hope not to get sucked over the falls, or perhaps c) try to pull through the back and again hope not to get sucked over.

These were the preferred methods employed by Pascal, Eamon Hanna, Sean Rufti Martin and myself. However there is a fourth option which was demonstrated by Tristan McCaffrey. He pulled in and made it through the last section a few times. Super shallow and riddled with boils, The Florist (Tristan's nickname because he comes out of all situations smelling like roses) made the end section look playful.

We had the left to ourselves for two days. Everyone had enough barrels to fill the memory bank for a while. In the late afternoon of the second day the Star Koat arrived and we shared the waves with Kadu and his guests.

Pascal is riding a 6'1'' Bruce Kay board. I was riding a 6'4'' Byrning Spears channel bottom shaped by the guru Allan Byrne. Both these shapers are too underrated considering their skills. If you're planning a trip to Indo, buy their boards. Pascal and I are average surfers and having good boards helps.//PATRICE GERAGHTY

(Ed's Note: Pascal is in the grey while Patrice is the fella in the red shirt in the photos below. Also, this is not the first time the Geraghty Brothers have featured on Swellnet. These photos show them at P-Pass with Patrice scoring the bomb - on 'Kong' Elkerton's board no less!)