Journeys

'The Chase' by Rachel McKendrick

by Tropicsurf Blog June 18, 2026

At some point in our lives we all chase something – we all look for that thing that makes our existence feel significant. Some chase art, others God, others fame, others surf. A few of us chase them all. And while it’s cliche, I think it might be true that in all of this, it’s not about where you end up in this life, it’s about how you go about getting there.

Perhaps bias is speaking when I write these things, but I believe surfers know this feeling more than most. The elusive nature of chasing waves takes them captive, coaxing them into a lifetime of searching. I don’t believe that there is any one wave or one session that they’re searching for. That wouldn’t make sense. The chase is bigger than that and it creates a soulfulness within surfers that sees them travel to places others can’t or won’t go.

Kudanil Explorer Trip... somewhere in Indonesia.

Just like there is no one wave we all search for, there is no one reason for our obsession with the ocean. For me, the lure is in the grace and art of wave riding. There is a rhythm found when sliding along the sea that is incomparable to anything else I have experienced. It’s the stillness within the movement; the way my mind slows with the energy of the sea. I keep going back because it’s thirst quenching for my soul.

I can almost guarantee that the motive is different for our local surf veteran who comes down to ‘check it’ every morning with his 7ft single fin in the back of his rusted out commodore. He knows as well as we all do that he won’t paddle out, just like he hasn’t for the last five winters. He will keep telling us about the 1973 swell and we will keep laughing him off, secretly hoping that we all have a 1973 equivalent to fall back on if we happen to make it into our 70s.

Island hopping in the Maldives.

There lies the unifier. I keep chasing. He keeps checking. We both do it just in case the next surf is ‘the surf’. We all want the same thing – to sidestep the elusiveness of surfing and arrive. And we will travel to the ends of the earth to do it. We’ll chase swells, sleep in hammocks, don ridiculous amounts of rubber, risk malaria, brave icy waters, weather our skin and spend hours upon hours upon hours checking the next spot because it’s surfing. Sometimes it pays off. Sometimes it doesn’t.

When it pays off, it does exactly that. You fly high, gliding both physically and psychologically. All your senses are heightened. The world is full of colour, regardless of the season or time. Sometimes the ocean throws gold under the rising sun, other times it shimmers silver with the rising moon. And sometimes the indistinguishable greys between sea and sky on a cloudy day are enough to keep you in awe. You feel the freedom in your fingertips with each stroke, acutely aware of every movement that pushes you into the line of swell. The anticipation rises. Within moments you find yourself weightless, drawing your own lines on nature’s most perfectly groomed canvas. This is your art. You can be mellow if you like, but grungy and edgy also have their place. Time stops. And then it starts again but you wish it really wouldn’t. You just had everything you were searching for but it was over so quick. So you hope and pray that the feeling will linger and the memory will last long enough to tie you over to the next time. You’ll talk about it to keep it alive and then you’ll start the chase again. It’s the world’s most pure high.

Sultans barrels on repeat... at Four Seasons Kuda Huraa Maldives Resort.

But like any addiction, once you’ve been up everyone knows that eventually you come down. A flat spot. It’s the sinking feeling you get when someone says “ya shoulda been here yesterday”, as you look out at what could have been. It seems trivial, probably because it is. It remains though, that surfers don’t deal well without surf. We travel across seas, risk personal relationships, dodge responsibility; in essence, we shape our lives around our capacity to surf and that can’t all be for nothing. But even when we metaphorically (or literally) miss the swell, we know that what surfing really offers us is the lifestyle we create around it. It’s not just about that ‘one wave’. It can’t be. We have all already had it in some form. Surfing is the lifestyle we build around the enigma of that ‘one wave’ – it’s health, art, freedom, passion and appreciation for what we have in the ocean, all packaged up in a very marketable and bleached surf image.

In a sense, we arrive at the quintessence of surfing with each sunrise, each new swell and each set. There will always be more and therein lies the beauty of surfing once again. You’re always arriving and you never arrive. It would be foolish to think that only surfers know the feeling of such elusive dreaming. In the end, we’re all chasing something and only few know what it is to find it fully. The process of looking for that thing is perhaps what makes our existence feel significant.

Seaplane, Maldives. Every chase begins somewhere beyond the horizon.

If this story has stirred something in you, perhaps your next horizon is still waiting to be found.

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Occy's Left, NIHI Sumba Indonesia