In part one of this three-part series documenting the made-for-Hollywood life of surfer Mike Boyum, we left Mike struggling to keep his G-Land surf camp in Indonesia. Now, we’ll continue with his legendary story.
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No one can ride a single wave forever. Most surfers last little more than 10-20 seconds on their board. In fact, out of an hour on the water, the average surfer is paddling for more than 35 minutes of that time and waiting in the lineup for another 20 minutes or so. Therefore, only about 8% of their time is spent actually surfing a wave – about 290 seconds, even on a good day.
No matter how epic the ride or high the thrill, nothing lasts forever. And the tide had gone out for Mike Boyum in Indonesia.
His larger-than-life reputation as G-Land’s founder had grown quickly as surfers from all over the world came to spend time at his camp – and fork over a hefty fee to do so.
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No one can ride a single wave forever. Most surfers last little more than 10-20 seconds on their board. In fact, out of an hour on the water, the average surfer is paddling for more than 35 minutes of that time and waiting in the lineup for another 20 minutes or so. Therefore, only about 8% of their time is spent actually surfing a wave – about 290 seconds, even on a good day.
No matter how epic the ride or high the thrill, nothing lasts forever. And the tide had gone out for Mike Boyum in Indonesia.
His larger-than-life reputation as G-Land’s founder had grown quickly as surfers from all over the world came to spend time at his camp – and fork over a hefty fee to do so.
But success attracts a lot of the wrong kind of attention in developing countries, and soon, the local officials who once gladly granted him use of the abandoned beach demanded a bigger piece of the pie. (As well as quite a few shakedowns and threats by locals and police alike, if my experience is accurate.)
Burning down his camp’s nipa huts and tree houses, Boyum was forced to relinquish control of his G-Land surf camp (eventually, an Indo local surfer took over and it’s still thriving today).
Burning down his camp’s nipa huts and tree houses, Boyum was forced to relinquish control of his G-Land surf camp (eventually, an Indo local surfer took over and it’s still thriving today).
However, there was another pressing reason to flee G-Land, as became the target of numerous drug investigations by Indonesian authorities.
In the late 1960s, drugs were synonymous with the exploding counter-culture movement, including the music scene with festivals like Woodstock, protesting the Vietnam War, and, yes, surfing.
Marijuana was everywhere, hundreds of thousands of young, shell-shocked troops came back from Vietnam addicted to heroin and opium, and psychedelics were on every college campus, with Timothy Leary encouraging the youth to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
In the late 1960s, drugs were synonymous with the exploding counter-culture movement, including the music scene with festivals like Woodstock, protesting the Vietnam War, and, yes, surfing.
Marijuana was everywhere, hundreds of thousands of young, shell-shocked troops came back from Vietnam addicted to heroin and opium, and psychedelics were on every college campus, with Timothy Leary encouraging the youth to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
Hell, it was the CIA who first started experimenting with LSD in an attempt to make “super” soldiers, and it wasn’t even illegal until 1968 and considered a Schedule I controlled substance until the 1970s.
Surfers were no exception, and one notable LSD smuggling operation out of Orange County, California included rainbow surfboards as the smuggling vessel of choice.
The big backlash came around 1969, when local police and federal law enforcement alike cracked down on the rampant drug use and looked to tame the long haired “hippies” that threatened the decent way of life.
Anyways, a few of these surfers ended up in Indonesia, as I mentioned, and guys like Peter McCabe, Jeff Chitty, ad Gerry Lopez were nearly as essential to establishing G-Land as Mike Boyum. Some of them funded their nomadic surf lifestyles by hollowing out the fins of their surfboards and filling them with plastic bags filled with heroin, hash, or Bolivian cocaine before sealing them up again.
Mike Boyum was disillusioned and heartbroken from his experience in Indonesia. Every penny (Indo money) he’d earned over the year stolen from him; he was forced to leave G-Land with nothing but the shirt on his back.
Surfers were no exception, and one notable LSD smuggling operation out of Orange County, California included rainbow surfboards as the smuggling vessel of choice.
The big backlash came around 1969, when local police and federal law enforcement alike cracked down on the rampant drug use and looked to tame the long haired “hippies” that threatened the decent way of life.
Anyways, a few of these surfers ended up in Indonesia, as I mentioned, and guys like Peter McCabe, Jeff Chitty, ad Gerry Lopez were nearly as essential to establishing G-Land as Mike Boyum. Some of them funded their nomadic surf lifestyles by hollowing out the fins of their surfboards and filling them with plastic bags filled with heroin, hash, or Bolivian cocaine before sealing them up again.
Mike Boyum was disillusioned and heartbroken from his experience in Indonesia. Every penny (Indo money) he’d earned over the year stolen from him; he was forced to leave G-Land with nothing but the shirt on his back.
At rock bottom, Mike started riding that dark wave and smuggling drugs, something that would come to define – and doom – his remaining days.
However, this is where fact takes a detour from the simple narrative again.
A friend of Mike’s I interviewed for this article told me that Mike never smuggled drugs until he’d been forced out of his surf camp. In fact, Mike had been relatively anti-drug, as he saw heroin addiction mess up a lot of his fellow surfer friends and snuff out otherwise promising lives. Boyum even used G-Land as a place to help addicted and strung-out surfers and others, as they could exercise, eat healthy, and be at one with nature while detoxing.
Mike “just wasn’t good at it [smuggling],” his old friend suggests, memories playing in his head like home movies, his cautious words revealing that he wished people knew the generous, always smiling, larger-than-life Mike that he was cool with.
It seems that while just about everything Mike touched turned to gold with legitimate business ventures, the criminal underworld just wasn’t for him.
However, this is where fact takes a detour from the simple narrative again.
A friend of Mike’s I interviewed for this article told me that Mike never smuggled drugs until he’d been forced out of his surf camp. In fact, Mike had been relatively anti-drug, as he saw heroin addiction mess up a lot of his fellow surfer friends and snuff out otherwise promising lives. Boyum even used G-Land as a place to help addicted and strung-out surfers and others, as they could exercise, eat healthy, and be at one with nature while detoxing.
Mike “just wasn’t good at it [smuggling],” his old friend suggests, memories playing in his head like home movies, his cautious words revealing that he wished people knew the generous, always smiling, larger-than-life Mike that he was cool with.
It seems that while just about everything Mike touched turned to gold with legitimate business ventures, the criminal underworld just wasn’t for him.
The beginning of his very long end may have come on one such illicit operation in 1984. It was then that Mike Boyum was arrested Noumea, New Caledonia (a French-colonized island east of Australia) along with Peter MCCabe and Jeff Chitty, as the three tried to smuggle half a kilo of Bolivian Marching Powder into Australia.
Boyum and Chitty managed to smuggle two kilos of coke from Brazil to Jakarta in a suitcase. Then, about half a kilo of the cocaine was packed into condoms that Chitty swallowed before boarding his flight to Noumea, where McCabe and Boyum were waiting for him.
It was there they planned on recovering the cocaine from Chitty and packing it into hollowed-out surfboard fins before someone else took the boards to Australia.
However, they didn’t get that far.
Boyum and Chitty managed to smuggle two kilos of coke from Brazil to Jakarta in a suitcase. Then, about half a kilo of the cocaine was packed into condoms that Chitty swallowed before boarding his flight to Noumea, where McCabe and Boyum were waiting for him.
It was there they planned on recovering the cocaine from Chitty and packing it into hollowed-out surfboard fins before someone else took the boards to Australia.
However, they didn’t get that far.
Chitty was confronted by customs agents upon landing in Noumea, who suspected him of carrying drugs internally (we’ll never know if they were just singling him out because he was a hippy surfer, or they actually had a tip because someone dropped dime on him).
Pressed by the aggressive agents, Chitty tried to keep his cool, but he knew he was fucked when they said they were taking him to the hospital to be x-rayed. But, improbably, they suddenly decided to let him go, telling him to “get your English arse out of here.”
Sweating and rattled, Chitty couldn’t believe his luck, but he was free to go. He recounted the whole story when he met up with McCabe and Boyum in their hotel. To celebrate their good fortune (and, coming monetary fortune), the three wild-men hit the town for a night out drinking.
Pressed by the aggressive agents, Chitty tried to keep his cool, but he knew he was fucked when they said they were taking him to the hospital to be x-rayed. But, improbably, they suddenly decided to let him go, telling him to “get your English arse out of here.”
Sweating and rattled, Chitty couldn’t believe his luck, but he was free to go. He recounted the whole story when he met up with McCabe and Boyum in their hotel. To celebrate their good fortune (and, coming monetary fortune), the three wild-men hit the town for a night out drinking.
When they got back to their hotel at 3am, they were snorting lines of their own product when police knocked on their door.
Note: I assume the police let Chitty go just so they could follow him to find the source or his buyers, but I have no evidence of this.
The police kicked in the door and arrested McCabe and Chitty on the spot. Boyum, however, scrambled out the hotel’s bathroom window before they could get him. Despite a massive manhunt conducted by local police and military, he evaded capture for a whole two weeks, hiding in the jungle and living off the land!
Note: I assume the police let Chitty go just so they could follow him to find the source or his buyers, but I have no evidence of this.
The police kicked in the door and arrested McCabe and Chitty on the spot. Boyum, however, scrambled out the hotel’s bathroom window before they could get him. Despite a massive manhunt conducted by local police and military, he evaded capture for a whole two weeks, hiding in the jungle and living off the land!
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Quickly ingratiated into the dark underbelly of the local surf scene, Mike got tight with members of the Maui mafia, presumably doing some sort of deals with them.
But he made an epically-fatal choice when he made off with one million dollars of their money, as it’s widely reported – a shit-ton of dough back in the 1980s.
Ripping off the Maui mob is bad for your health, and Boyum was now running out of options – or places to hide. By then, he’d been red flagged by just about every airline and international agency, so he didn’t stand a chance when he tried to extend his career as a drug smuggler posing as a surfer.
I’m told he kept getting arrested, evading capture, fleeing, and hopping from country to country to try and evade arrest again. He got back to Asia and we do know he spent time in Thailand, but that was probably too obvious to his Hawaiian mobster friends.
On the run, without friends he could trust, looking over his shoulder with every unfamiliar face and jumping at every backfiring motorcycle, the life on the lam didn’t suit Boyum.
But he made an epically-fatal choice when he made off with one million dollars of their money, as it’s widely reported – a shit-ton of dough back in the 1980s.
Ripping off the Maui mob is bad for your health, and Boyum was now running out of options – or places to hide. By then, he’d been red flagged by just about every airline and international agency, so he didn’t stand a chance when he tried to extend his career as a drug smuggler posing as a surfer.
I’m told he kept getting arrested, evading capture, fleeing, and hopping from country to country to try and evade arrest again. He got back to Asia and we do know he spent time in Thailand, but that was probably too obvious to his Hawaiian mobster friends.
On the run, without friends he could trust, looking over his shoulder with every unfamiliar face and jumping at every backfiring motorcycle, the life on the lam didn’t suit Boyum.
They only finally caught him by dropping a net on him from a helicopter, it’s reported. However, according to a friend of his who served as a source for this article, a more accurate version of events was that Mike was just exhausted so he stopped running one day so it could all be over.
McCabe did 18 months in a New Caledonian jail for that one after being sentenced to three years; Chitty got the same sentence. Boyum was slapped with a four-year prison sentence because he also eluded police, according to my information, and did all four years in jail, roughly account for the years between 1984 and 1988.
However, I couldn’t find any account of his time in prison or any details of his life during those years.
McCabe did 18 months in a New Caledonian jail for that one after being sentenced to three years; Chitty got the same sentence. Boyum was slapped with a four-year prison sentence because he also eluded police, according to my information, and did all four years in jail, roughly account for the years between 1984 and 1988.
However, I couldn’t find any account of his time in prison or any details of his life during those years.
It’s also worth mentioning that Chitty and McCabe continued with the drug trafficking vocation, eventually serving 8 and 14 years in Australian prisons, respectively.
Following his spotty post-jail timeline, we do know that Mike Boyum headed back stateside once he was free to leave New Caledonia. There’s a story that places him in New York City, too, where he was hanging out with old school surfer and friend, Ricky Rasmussen.
Following his spotty post-jail timeline, we do know that Mike Boyum headed back stateside once he was free to leave New Caledonia. There’s a story that places him in New York City, too, where he was hanging out with old school surfer and friend, Ricky Rasmussen.
Unfortunately, Rasmussen’s heroin problem had grown from bad to worse and he was a full-on junkie by then.
Sitting in the back of a taxi cab, the driver turned around and shot him in the head, as the story goes – perhaps retribution for a heroin deal gone south.
After that, Boyum didn’t last long in New York, and we hear about him living in Hawaii, where he got into even bigger trouble.
Sitting in the back of a taxi cab, the driver turned around and shot him in the head, as the story goes – perhaps retribution for a heroin deal gone south.
After that, Boyum didn’t last long in New York, and we hear about him living in Hawaii, where he got into even bigger trouble.
Soon ingratiated into the dark underbelly of the local surf scene, Mike got tight with members of the Maui mafia, presumably doing some sort of deal with them. But, he made an epically-fatal choice when he made off with one million dollars of their money, as it’s commonly reported – a shit-ton of dough back in the 1980s.
Sometimes referred to as The Company or The Syndicate, no matter what you call them, ripping off Maui heavy-hitters is bad for your health. And Boyum was now running out of options – or places to hide.
By then, he’d been red flagged by just about every airline and international agency, so he didn’t stand a chance when he tried to extend his career as a drug smuggler posing as a surfer.
I’m told he kept getting arrested, evading capture, fleeing, and hopping from country to country to try and evade arrest again. He got back to Asia and we do know he spent time in Thailand, but that was probably too obvious to his Hawaiian mobster friends.
On the run, without friends he could trust, looking over his shoulder with every unfamiliar face and jumping at every backfiring motorcycle, the life on the lam didn’t suit Boyum.
Still a surfer at heart; perhaps longing for those simpler, pure days when he first discovered G-Land with his brother, Boyum needed to find a place that was virtually unknown, where he could really hide out.
Sometimes referred to as The Company or The Syndicate, no matter what you call them, ripping off Maui heavy-hitters is bad for your health. And Boyum was now running out of options – or places to hide.
By then, he’d been red flagged by just about every airline and international agency, so he didn’t stand a chance when he tried to extend his career as a drug smuggler posing as a surfer.
I’m told he kept getting arrested, evading capture, fleeing, and hopping from country to country to try and evade arrest again. He got back to Asia and we do know he spent time in Thailand, but that was probably too obvious to his Hawaiian mobster friends.
On the run, without friends he could trust, looking over his shoulder with every unfamiliar face and jumping at every backfiring motorcycle, the life on the lam didn’t suit Boyum.
Still a surfer at heart; perhaps longing for those simpler, pure days when he first discovered G-Land with his brother, Boyum needed to find a place that was virtually unknown, where he could really hide out.
It was then that Mike Boyum took out a ripped and faded world map, scanning for the ideal place for someone who wanted to get lost, his finger stopping on a little-known country called The Philippines.
And it’s there that his story takes an even more unpredictable turn…and comes to its tragic last act.
-Norm :-)
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Subscribe to this blog and stay tuned for part 3 of Mike Boyum’s life story coming next month.
And it’s there that his story takes an even more unpredictable turn…and comes to its tragic last act.
-Norm :-)
***
Subscribe to this blog and stay tuned for part 3 of Mike Boyum’s life story coming next month.
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