Atoll Odyssey

Drifting in the maldives with the billabong crew; alessa quizon, isabella nichols and laura enever.

It’s a strange feeling to be adrift in the middle of nowhere. The sky above us, our boards below us, alone in the empty calm of the Indian Ocean, we imagined ourselves explorers seeking new horizons. Like modern-day Magellans, only with bikinis and surfboards. This is how people must have felt before there were maps: boundless and free.

But the Maldives are on a map, of course. We pointed to them there, our fingers grazing a string of ring-shaped atolls composed of more than a thousand coral islands. On the back of a napkin we sketched plans for a surf trip there, dreaming of white sand, bustling fish markets and cobalt lagoons.

Those plans into turned plane tickets, which is how we found ourselves adrift here on a rusty boat – with Laura Enever, Alessa Quizon and Isabella Nichols, our favourite bikinis from the Surf Capsule Collection, a quiver of boards and a few soggy egg sandwiches – for seven days at sea.