Lance's Right: The Crazy Story Behind One of the World's Greatest Surf Discoveries
In the world of surf discoveries, there’s some pretty wild stories out there.
These are the pioneers of perfect waves, the folks who put in the work, studied the maps, braved jungles, deserts, unknown waters...all to score untouched, epic surf.
G-Land. Cloudbreak. And more recently, Skeleton Bay.
For the intrepid surfers who discovered these spots, it must’ve felt like being a pirate, hunting like mad, then finally finding a buried chest of hidden treasure.
And one of those stories is Lance’s Right (or Hollow Trees) – one of the best waves in the Mentawai Islands, and one of the best waves in the world – as discovered by, you guessed it, a guy named Lance. He discovered it, he gets naming rights.
In a new video from Dan Harmon, he recounts that story. Harmon describes:
“Lances’ Right is one of the most sought-after waves on the planet. And for good reason. A place that offers the chance to score the wave of your life in the form of a bright blue roll-in freight train. A wave that everyone wants a piece of. Today, Lance’s Right attracts surfers from around the world and with dozens of camps and charter boats, you won’t be surfing it alone anytime soon. But in the early 90’s, surf exploration in the Ments was a relatively new concept, and Lance Knight stumbled upon one of the greatest waves on earth. This video tells that story…”
Related: Vanished Surf Spots: The Best Waves No Longer in Existence (Video)
So, Lance Knight, an Aussie surfer fresh off the loss of a job and a relationship, ventured to the wilds of the Mentawai Islands. And from there, he made friends with locals, hitched puddle jumpers between islands, and eventually, discovered the wave.
As for today:
“The wave still remains the same. Freight-training, shallow, perfectly blue righthander. While it’s definitely crowded, and not the sort of remote empty tropical paradise it was when Lance discovered it back in ’91, it’s one of those waves everyone should surf once in their life.”
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