Reaching Reality

From under the Golden Gate Bridge down to the Santa Cruz Islands the three friends and their little boat are now heading south. However bad weather is on the horizon and signs that the film and the filmmaker are already thinking about abandoning ship are starting to leak through. After a long night of sea sickness, it’s time to face reality and see who’s going to stick around and who’s going to go.

Now closing in on Mexico and having spent nearly a month at sea, the crew are facing some realities they didn’t expect. It’s cold, it’s wet, and its nothing like what they were hoping. Adding to the chaos, Barry is emotionally lost and opens up about what he left behind to go on this trip. As the crew pokes around Catalina Island and down into Mexico a reckoning with what the trip is and what they wanted it to be is on the horizon and with it a new reality of life.

Deeper south into the Baja Peninsula, the weather has calm and sunny days are more common. As we open the episode with the boat breaking free from being trapped by an anchor locked in the reef, there is a new sense of freedom. On the horizon are rare and never-before seen islands with beached seals, isolated lighthouse keepers, and massive salt mines. As they discover the new and uncharted, word comes in that surf is coming and now the race is on to get the best location to capture the incoming waves.

Deep into the empty desert of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, the three are now in pursuit of a storm swell and predictions of surf. As the head towards what’s to be an iconic moment in the trip the stop off in Tortuga Bay and have a peculiar discovery of fossilized shark’s teeth deep in the heart of this cake yellow desert. Charging south on the heals of incoming surf they land in the midst of reach surf culture and smack in the middle of society. Now after over a month in isolation the three wrestle with the experience while chasing after the best waves of the trip.

After nearly two months at sea, which now seems like lifetimes compounded by the suffering and challenge of the passage. The three are closing out their trip home and saving the best for last. Shocked by what seems to be death island, the three uncover shark hunters and in their last village before departure battle to resupply with the essentials of gas and water with the last pennies on the boat. Meanwhile the struggles of our filmmaker’s journey return along with the fear of going back to all that was left behind.