“She's worked hard at Raglan Roast the past three months to fund this trip,” Patrick Braithwaite said.
His daughter would be in Hawaii for about a month.
Father and daughter had extended a family surf trip by a month in the latter part of the New Zealand winter last year so they could travel to the island of Nias in north-west Indonesia, off the west coast of Sumatra.
After watching Asia in the surf at Sumbawa, south-east Indonesia, Patrick Braithwaite had judged her ready to take on waves of greater intensity.
But she had to be willing to step up to the challenge.
“I will pull you out of school for another month and we will go up to Sumatra,” he told her.
“I know a wave there that's heavy and dangerous. If we go there you are not sleeping in; there's no mucking around. You will get the biggest barrels in your life and the heaviest surf ever surfed by a Kiwi female.”
Asia soon convinced the more experienced surfers there that she could ride her board well enough to be worthy of a place in the line-up.
She could also handle herself in the ragdoll confusion of a wipeout in the shallow water above the reef.
On her return from that trip, Asia described the feeling of surfing a wave in those waters.
“I was in this huge tunnel of water,” she said.
“It was an amazing feeling . . . how heavy, how powerful and how much energy it had. I'd never surfed anything like that.
“Adrenalin was rushing through my body. I have always liked big waves. It takes quite a bit for me to actually feel adrenalin, to feel scared of something and try to conquer it.
“Now I want to go bigger. I have surfed that size; now I want to see how far my limits go.”
Over the next month she will get the opportunity to test those limits and take another step on her big-wave journey.
