I later learned that the missile was fired from a launch pad near Point Sal, 25 miles north. But where was that missile going, and why?

A week later, lunching in a sunny downtown bistro, I found a coffee-stained Santa Barbara News-Press dated from the day of the launch:

VANDENBERG AFB—An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was successfully launched from North Vandenberg at 1:03 a.m. PDT today. The mission was part of the Force Development Evaluation Program, which tests the reliability and accuracy of the weapon system. The missile’s two unarmed re-entry vehicles traveled approximately 4,200 miles in about 30 minutes, hitting pre-determined targets at the Kwajalein Missile Range in the western chain of the Marshall Islands.

Located mid-Pacific, the Marshall Islands comprise a Micronesian republic of 29 atolls and five islands, nearly all of them inhabited and swell-blessed. As far as I knew, the only surfers there were some Americans who worked for the U.S. government. Intelligence about Marshallese surf potential was scant, limited mainly to what the expats occasionally surfed on Kwajalein and Majuro atolls.
Today, Kwajalein monitors satellites and is the blue-water catcher’s mitt for measuring splashdown accuracy of rockets fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base, another militarized fetch of obscure waves, armed guards, and spooky white radar dishes.

Months after my Vandenberg camping trip, on a breezy, rainbowy morning, my friend Lance deposited me curbside at Honolulu International Airport, the Marshall Islands a five-hour flight away.
“Gotta be waves there, brah,” Lance said before pulling away. “You might be the first to surf some reef pass.”

Ultimately, wave-rich Kwajalein eluded me (“Sorry, sir,” drawled an official from the U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense Command headquarters in Alabama, “but journalists just ain’t allowed.”). Yet I had a fleeting glimpse when my flight, en route to Majuro, landed on Kwajalein to offload some Army personnel and government contractors.

Robert Louis Stevenson, visiting Majuro Atoll in 1889, called it the “Pearl of the Pacific,” and rightly so, because in 1889 Majuro was but a palmy coral ring.

There was no unsightly industry, no rusty beer cans, no junked cars, no broken glass, no graffiti, no plastic debris, no diesel exhaust, no bar fights, no Asian ships in the lagoon, or ugly seawalls or the flimsy tin shacks virtually everywhere you looked in 2004.

Before leaving home, I received an e-mail from Ric, a globe-trotting American who was building a tiny eco-resort on a ten-acre island on neighboring Arno Atoll:

“I wouldn’t go in the water at Majuro. Too much boat and people pollution. Surf Arno instead. Fully private, fun waves all to yourself. It is better than porno!”

Majuro, nine miles west of Arno, is the Marshalls’ nucleus, home to the republic’s primary government, most of its business, and about half of its entire population, hence one of the most densely populated atolls on Earth.

Despite all of this, and the atoll’s penchant for attracting stray swell, surfers are essentially unknown. The few on Majuro are expat white American teachers and Seventh Day Adventist volunteers who can barely wax a surfboard, let alone handle the sucky tubes at the Bridge, Majuro’s marquee surf spot. The bridge itself, built with Japanese yen in 1983, is twelve feet high, Majuro’s highest point, spanning a narrow channel the Japanese blasted here to spare small boats the hassle of entry/exit up at Calalen Channel, several miles from the lagoon anchorage. Oddly, my Moon guidebook mentioned of the spot:

The bottom is a very hard reef that should not be surfed, and there are often dangerous currents in the channel as the tide goes out. This is not a place for anyone but experts.

I’m no expert, but the Bridge was quite good, a tropical Little Drakes, but shallower, with a severely jagged coral reef and parrot fish instead of flat, seaweedy rock and curious seals.

Konou Smith is a pilot for Air Marshall Islands and, in his early thirties, is Majuro’s only native surfer. We surfed the Bridge one evening, trading waves facing a pastel sunset. The air was windless, the dusk soft and silent—tropical idyll.

Two weeks before my trip, after a night of particular debauchery, I took an online quiz, 24 yes-or-no questions to gauge one’s alcoholism, scored thusly: zero to three meant you were a “probable social drinker”; four meant you were “borderline”; five-plus meant “possible alcoholism”; nine-plus meant “probable alcoholism.”

I scored 21.

So I was thrilled to learn that booze was illegal in the Marshalls’ outer atolls. I could detoxify and sunbathe, read and explore, surf and snorkel, liberated from morning-after nausea and unfounded aggression. The outer Marshallese were a dusky race of purity, curiosity, sweetness, and their environs were brightly sterile and surfy, with no thugs or thievery. If there is one place Alcoholics Anonymous should build a rehab center, it is there.

Konou said a trip to the Marshalls couldn’t be complete without seeing Arno Atoll, so I booked a berth on its ferry and left at noon the next day.

It was a glorious afternoon, and on the way into Arno’s harbor I had noticed swell curling along the reefs. I was going surfing, damnit—the nearest surfer was Konou, nine miles away back on Majuro.
Problem was, the pickup truck we were in was one of three operational cars on the entire atoll, and I couldn’t borrow it.

“You can use my bike,” a man named Francis said.
“How far is the beach from the cottage?”
“Oh, not far. Maybe few minutes by bike. Longer if you walk, of course.”
“Does your bike work?”
“As far as I know.”

The bike was a pathetic piece of junk, with weeds wrapped in its gears, and it wobbled horribly, likely because everything on it was loose. I was sweating madly. Both tires were flat again, so I stopped at a thin clearing. Here the land was so narrow that I was five feet on either side of water, the calm turquoise lagoon on my left, the sparkly and equally turquoise Pacific on my right...which had a perfect right-hand reef wave peeling into deep water not far offshore.

What?

No hallucination: here was something special, and it looked too good to be true, which it was, because I had a squirmy 5’11” fish and the sets were a top-to-bottom double-overhead, boiling along a slab of shallow, healthy coral. Nothing I saw earlier was remotely this size—either the swell had suddenly jacked, or it was coming from a very particular angle that missed the rest of the atoll.

I paddled out with my water camera and snapped some photos, first from afar for casual perspective, then up-close for personal intimidation. On the beach, the coconut palm thicket glowed brightly green in the direct late-day sun, and it would have been a perfect postcard image had my camera continued to work—I shot half a roll, then it was done.

I attempted to shoulder-hop a few on the inside, but there was too much water moving around. So I paddled in. The bike was gone.

The next day I found a different beach where the surf was small but very clean, fairly mushy but shapely, and easily accessible. The beach had a few small structures on it, all of rough tin and wood, and there were several small children gawking at us. The adults—only one was male—sat in the shade of the shacks doing nothing. The man strummed a beat-up guitar. I waved and they waved back, but I felt intrusive, so I left.

That afternoon I walked back through the jungle to check the surf at a different area of the island. The surf had increased during the day, but at dusk the tide was too low and the light was fading. The swell was strong and orderly, about six feet, but warbly atop the shallow coral heads. I vowed to return first thing the next day.

I did, and so did an entire village to watch, witnessing surfing for their first time. The children clapped and screamed after each wave; the adults were probably thinking: “How can this guy stand on the wave?” and “Why does he not drown?” and “Why is he so stupid?”

The wave was a fast and consistent head-high left, peeling over a kaleidoscope of corals, eventually sputtering into deep nearshore water. The water’s stunning clarity was convenient for spotting reef imperfections and ghastly coral heads: It would not be good if I fell right...there.

A few hours later I was back in Majuro, at the hospital, with an IV stuck in my arm. I had bonked a coral head with my own head and could not see straight afterward, so Francis had me ferried to Majuro for inspection. It was a mild concussion.

“You should not go surfing for a long time,” the doctor said.

And so my trip was done. The journey, far from home, full of downtime and delay, was the result of a dream to surf the equatorial unknown. And on that bright and sunny day it was right there, through a lush palm grove, tucked into a broken coral beach cove on a pristine coast.

Other discoveries ensued—including a prime left-hander—but that one was the most private, and it is what remained with me when I left Arno Atoll: the essence of surf travel.

Special thanks to Francis Reimers, Chris Leonard, Konou Smith, and the Marshall Islands Visitors Authority (www.visitmarshallislands.com).