There are surf trips. And then there’s sailing for 12 straight days into the middle of the Pacific, arriving at islands so isolated that even finding a wave feels like an expedition.
For John John Florence, apparently, that’s the point.
“12 days at sea and we arrived to one of the most remote areas in the world,” the 3x world champ said in his latest vlog, documenting his arrival in the Marquesas Islands.
The volcanic archipelago sits roughly 900 miles northeast of Tahiti, part of French Polynesia but a world apart from the postcard resorts of Bora Bora. Its jagged green peaks plunge into deep bays, with black-sand shorelines, towering cliffs, and very little in the way of conventional surf tourism.
There are 12 principal islands, only six inhabited. In 2024, UNESCO added the Marquesas to its World Heritage List, recognizing both their extraordinary natural ecosystems and a Polynesian culture that traces its roots back roughly a thousand years. Unlike Tahiti, many of the islands lack the protective barrier reefs and turquoise lagoons familiar from travel brochures.
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In other words, exactly the kind of place a sailor with three world titles and an appetite for uncrowded waves might want to explore.
“The cool thing about surfing here was you’re surfing off of landslides and so it’s these giant, thousand-foot cliffs that are on the ocean,” Florence explained. “It creates these like big bowly reefs and it makes for some really interesting waves. You’d be on a wave and there’s like a boil and a section and all kinds of weird stuff going on.”
Florence’s ongoing sailing adventure has taken him, his wife Lauryn, and their son Darwin across distant stretches of ocean, with plenty of unexpected surf sessions along the way. The new stop offers more of that familiar magic: rippable waves in a setting far removed from contest scaffolding and crowded lineups. Whether anyone has surfed these particular spots before is impossible to establish, but they’re certainly a long way from the usual surf-trip circuit.
As Florence explained when launching his Vela series earlier this year, “For me, this adventure isn’t a break from surfing. It’s a modern version of what surfing used to be.”
No heat clocks. No judges. No guarantee of swell. Just pure adventure.
Related: Inside the ‘Most Isolated Islands on the Planet’: The Untouched Marquesas (Video)
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