“There was a time in my life that I could do nothing except think about Macaroni’s. Like every day I would think – how am I going to get there.

I think Yago thought the same thing on our trip. He was on another boat trip and was supposed to hop straight onto ours. It always sounds like a good idea doing two back-to-back boat trips, but it never is. So we were at Macaroni’s waiting for Yago to jump on our boat, but Yago was 200 miles north of us. I don’t know how he did it, but he took an overnight ferry, then slept in a surf resort, then took a local canoe for 6 hours and finally climbed onboard. We gave him a hug and fed him a bowl of Coco-Crunch, but he couldn’t stop looking at the waves. He then paddled out and for the next 4 days did some of the best surfing I’ve seen in a long time. The kid is something.” —Nate Lawrence