"That board felt like the starting point for a new life."

I'd been trying to get hold of Torren Martyn for a few days but phone reception - or lack of it - was getting the better of me. Torren, you see, was sailing the wild west coast of Tasmania with more pressing matters to attend to than speaking with a journo.

Occasionally I'd get a text: "I'm standing on the highest point of a sand dune, have one bar, call now."

But by the time I got my act together, one bar had become none and all I got was voicemail.

On Thursday afternoon that all changed. That morning, he and Ishka Folkwell sailed into a protected harbour and pulled ashore near a large settlement - one with mobile phone towers. When I rang them they were "ripping into bowls of pasta" as they'd just had a few days of wild weather.

Now seated in salubrious surroundings, I asked Torren about his 'old friend' - the original 7'9" Massive - and like a man freshly fed and invigorated he answered expansively.

"That board was so left-field of where we were going. At the time my boards were getting shorter and shorter - I was riding this little 5'5" or something."

"It was 7''9" long and it caught me off guard. I was just hanging around the Northern Rivers so I thought to myself, 'Oh, this board will be great in one to two foot pointbreaks.'"

"However, when I rode it I got this whole new buzz. It was strange to me how natural it felt to get onto a board of that length."

"After riding it, it felt like everything changed. Like, that board changed surfing for me; it changed my experience around surfing, the things that I loved, it changed what I thought I knew about surfing."

"That board felt like the starting point for a new life."

A new life..? Was he exagerrating? Had Ishka tipped whiskey into the pasta pot? How can one surfboard change the trajectory of a life?

Consider, perhaps, Torren's life after 2016. The gig with needessentials, the many travel films, beginning life with his partner Aiyana, and welcoming their daughter Naia.

A good surfer on any craft, Torren levitated to a higher plane when he hopped on a mid-length. It wasn't just radical surfing but something more open and encompassing. Whatever it was, Torren could unwittingly shift the needle, as marketing folk call it. He had the ability to influence popular culture and move units. And that creates freedom. Creates opportunities.

Looked at this way, his current mission to sail around Tasmania could be traced back to that board, so perhaps he had a point.

The reunion got Torren thinking, not just about the past, but also about the future.

"It's been a privilege to ride so many different boards, but next year I want to ride just one board no matter what the surf is."

"I want to strip surfing back to the essence and I think this is a good way to do it."

I suggest that it's one way to know a board intimately. "Yeah, I think I'll get very tuned into it," he says.

And by the end of 2026 Torren will have another old friend.