Surfers Spend $130,000 Seeking Perfect Waves on Superyacht

On my second morning in the Maldives, a dhoni drops me at Jailbreaks, a barreling right-hand reef break named for a former prison on the nearby island of Himmafushi. The wave was off-limits until the late 1990s, when the facility was downgraded to a kind of rehab center for Maldivians caught drinking alcohol -- forbidden in this Indian Ocean archipelago, where Sunni Islam is the official state religion. At the airport in the capital city of Male, I was greeted by a List of Prohibited and Restricted Items Under Maldivian Law that could have doubled as a packing list for the surf trips of my youth: alcohol; narcotics, illicit drugs and psychotropic substances; pork and products of pork; spear guns; dogs. Religious restrictions aside, this is not that kind of trip. I’m here with outfitter Tropicsurf chasing perfect, unpeopled waves, leaving little time for the dragon-fruit cocktails back at the Four Seasons Kuda Huraa, where alcohol is definitely allowed.

The swell is picking up at Jailbreaks, and Tropicsurf founder Ross Phillips is dishing out advice with a quiet authority undiminished by the Aussie tick of turning declarations into rhetorical questions.