Best Sections of All-Time: Lost at Sea

This movie is special. It feels like true core surf folklore. Like, if you haven’t seen Lost at Sea, you don’t know the full progression and style creation story of surfing. It has that kind of mythology to me.

It’s nearly an hour long and meanders and floats its way through the Mentawaii island chain with one of the raddest late-90s boat trip crews ever assembled — Andy Irons, Cory Lopez, Chris Ward, Shane Beschen, Gavin Beschen and Shea Lopez — surfing to this meandering, extended song-leading-into-song soundtrack that you never want to end.

I tried to pick a section to feature, but I failed. They’re surfing one of the most photographed places on earth of the last few decades and every section feels fresh. The whole 53-minute film feels like one extended part so let’s treat it that way. If nothing else, let that soundtrack blaze in the background all day, it’s gold.

I think the pinnacle, if I had to choose, is the 14-minute part (starting around the 20:27 mark) featuring the most playful Lance’s Right I’ve ever seen and only the boys out for what must have been a full 12 hour jam session of tubes and ripping. You see the wave go through a few tides and wind situations and every guy gets to style out over and over on a conveyor belt of perfect surfing. The consecutive Jane’s Addiction songs (I think there’s 3 or 4) all stitch together this wandering session into one raw jam session and there are a few waves that Gavin Beschen links to the inside that anyone who’s ever ridden a wave will understand as a moment of absolute section-linking bliss.

Enjoy, this film is perfect. 10/10.—Travis Ferré

*Once again thanks to Surf Vidz on YouTube for remastering and posting these classics in their entirety.