"Off on a new adventure with our little family, can’t wait to see where we go!"
Three months after making it official that he wasn’t gonna hit the tour in 2025, Pipe excepted, Big Daddy John John Florence has been discovered with his little family, wife Lauren and bebe Darwin, in the town of Mount Manaia in New Zealand.
BeachGrit’s trans-Tasman readers, the moderator of the below-the-line panel included, will laud John John Florence’s decision to explore some of New Zealand’s most dramatic coastal scenery, a decision made easy by the fact his forty-eight foot gunboat Vela has been sitting dockside there after listing it for sale almost two years ago for $1.3 million American dollars.
It followed a terrific voyage across the Pacific where John John Florence and pals sailed the catamaran 1200 miles to Palmyra Atoll. The accompanying video series drew gyspy rings around all the edits and series’ doin the rounds at the time.
In 2015, John John Florence had declared, “My ultimate goal with sailing is to be able to travel fast, cover long distances, and go surfing. I want to combine the two.”
And, so, once monied enough to realise the dream Florence bought snowboarder Travis Rice’s forty-eight foot cat, Falcor, which was promptly renamed Vela, with its three “queen berths” (everyone’s a queen at sea), one thousand feet of sail area and a main saloon where all sorts of naughty and dangerous activities often take place at sea.
“My relationship with the boat is definitely a love, hate relationship,” John John Florence said. “Sometimes I’m like, this is the most amazing thing ever. Look at it. We’re sailing at 15 knots and it’s beautiful and everything feels great. And then the next moment something breaks and I’m like, this is the worst. I hate this. I don’t know why we’re doing this. Why do I put myself through this stress? I’m selling the boat. When we get to Fiji, I’m selling the boat, we’re done.”
John John’s videos of his new life were posted on his Instagram account and show a young family who have life firmly gripped in their hands. We see the departure from Honolulu, Darwin, who was named after the towering British biologist who gave the world the theory of evolution, getting his first lifejacket, the arrival on the Vela, Darwin being given a tour of the engine room etc.
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“Packing, fixing, getting going on the road to nowhere, and having a lot of fun along the way,” writes John John Florence.
