LIZ CLARK

Liz Clark

Clouds grew out of nothing into giant thunderheads. The wind went from calm to 40 knots and slammed head on into the 40-foot sailboat. Liz Clark was alone in the middle of a 1,300-mile passage to Bora Bora from Kiribati, a mere speck of tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She hadn’t slept in almost three days. She had run out of food. The storm threatened to snap her headstay and cause her mast to fall over, and she feared the lightning would blow a hole in her boat. It was a low point in the 34-year-old exploratory surfer’s nine-year quest for remote breaks.

“That was one of my most challenging times at sea,” says Clark. “It really showed me what I'm capable of after a few days of no sleep. It made me strong.”

It took Clark 15 days to sail to Bora Bora rather than the seven she had planned for. The lightning struck close enough to damage electrical equipment. The storm also caused a mysterious leak that forced her and her home and sailboat, Swell, out of the water and into a foreign boatyard where she didn’t speak the language and didn’t have much money to pay for repairs. Identifying and fixing the leak took 11 months over of course of a year and a half. Clark did most of the manual labor herself.

Since Clark set sail from Santa Barbara in October 2005, the ocean has proved a beautiful but rugged place to call home. In the 25,000 nautical miles she has traveled, the California native has had to weather over a dozen major storms in the open ocean on her own and has had to haul Swell out of the water for repairs on seven separate occasions.

Clark travels alone with a cat named Amelia (after Amelia Earhart) as first mate, using nautical charts; Google Earth; and wind, weather, and swell forecasts to hunt down remote surf breaks. In the spirit of preserving the joy of discovering a pristine wave for others, she refuses to release the exact locations of the swells.

So far, Clark has sailed down the coasts of Mexico and Central America, explored the western islands of Panama and the Galápagos, made several loops around the islands of French Polynesia, and spent time exploring the eastern islands of Kiribati. Eventually, she hopes to circumnavigate the Earth, a childhood dream, but she places more importance on exploration and surfing rather than on speed.

She’s now planted in French Polynesia while she works on a book about her travels, writes a blog to inspire others to find their own adventures and live with a gentler impact on the planet—and, of course, surfs.

“I feel so much gratitude for the life I've been able to live at 34 years. I have a lot of joy on a daily basis. I really want that for other people,” Clark explains. “I try to inspire people to make their own personal adventure. Our journeys are all so unique, and whether it's sailing on a boat or something really different, there's so many ways that we can find our truth and our niche.”