The Curious, Jubilant Life of John John Florence, Explorer at Sea

Find the Florence's, John John, Lauryn and baby Dez, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, as content as cats with a trail of blood on their muzzles.

Do you look back on you life at this mid-point and see a vision of pleasure, of sacrifice and discipline and the fruits thus grown, or is your story a litany of weakness and neurosis with little harmonic resonance?

I started poorly, did well through the third decade before crumbling it all into a brutish pile, scarred by my own vandalism and driven by vanity. I judge my decisions with bitterness and a painful harshness though feel no self-pity or sadness, a detached curiosity at how quickly castles can melt into the sand.

There have been a few laughs along the way, howevs, and most of you have hung on for the ride.

In contrast.

The surfer John John Florence, three-times a lady and still only thirty four, has lived a life, at least so far, that will be transformed into a glorious page in the history of humankind

A childhood both difficult and blessed, injuries overcome, a sport dominated, as the French say, from barbe au cul, now, a wife, a gorgeous child and a life lived simply on a million-dollar catamaran.

In his latest missive from the Atlantic, we find the Florence’s, John John, Lauryn and baby Dez, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, as content as cats with a trail of blood on their muzzles.

Beginning one of John John Florence’s movies is a lot like curling up on the sofa with the Bayeux Tapestry. 

As Jacques Cousteau said, and which certainly would include John John, “Every explorer I have met has been driven—not coincidentally but quintessentially—by curiosity, by a single-minded, insatiable, and even jubilant need to know.”

Essential.