"What I’m Doing Now Feels Endless:" John John Florence Opens Up About Future Plans

When the 2026 Championship Tour kicks off in a couple of weeks, three-time world champion John John Florence will be on a boat somewhere in the Caribbean. Surveying the horizon from the helm of his new 60-foot catamaran, he’s going surfing. He plans to push from the Bahamas, through the Panama Canel, and down into the South Pacific, eventually ending up in New Zealand in November or December. 

Recently dropping the first installment of his six-part series, Edge of the Ocean | Vela presented by YETI, the project details John and his family’s adventures sailing through Fiji for the better part of three months last year. Seasick babies, empty slabs, idyllic islands, it’s a drastic departure from tour life. And after talking with him last week while he was anchored in the Bahamas, it’s clear he’s not coming back anytime soon:

Watch the full-length edit of Edge of the Ocean | Vela presented by YETI here.

SURFER: Do you miss life on tour?
John John Florence: There are definitely pieces of competing that I miss. That pinpoint focus on what you’re doing, it can be really rewarding. But it’s more of a short-term reward, whereas what I’m doing now, there’s a much deeper reward to it. You win a title or something, and realize it’s never quite what you thought it would feel like. Eventually, you realize it’s about the process and going through that with your friends the whole time. But sailing, this is something I can do, at least right now, that includes my family. On the competitive side, you can bring your family on the road, but you’re not really mentally there if you’re trying to win. If you’re trying to win, you’re very focused on what you’re doing.

Is there a feeling after winning a title that you get to the next day and it’s kind of like, now what?
Exactly. You wake up, and you’re back to square one. The ratings reset. And this year, I haven’t been able to find that one thing, that reason for wanting to go out there and win. If I go back, I’m not going to go back just to compete. I want to win. At the same time, I know it’s not just about winning, but you have to find that deeper reason to go through all this stuff.

And once you started sailing and having adventures with your family, maybe your priorities shifted a little?
Yeah, I think that’s it. What I’m doing now is still challenging and takes a lot of work, but it includes everyone. It seems like, right now, it’s a more fun path. That time together is short. To win a world title, it takes so much energy and so much time, and at least for me, I wasn’t just cruising. It’s 24/7 of trying to make yourself better than the other guy. You start getting really good at saying no to everything else, which doesn’t really work that well with a family. They may be there, but I’m not there mentally. 

If you look at someone like Phil Edwards, who stepped away from the surfing spotlight to build boats and fish, or Joey Cabel, simmilar story, it feels like this is a natural evolution in your surf life.
World titles, I’ve won three of them. So, I could go back and try to win another one, but it feels like there’s a cap there. There’s a limit to what you can do there, but what I’m doing now, it feels endless. There’s so much out there. Pretty much everywhere we’ve gone, you look at the charts and think there could be a wave at this location, and more often than not, there is. There’s so much out there still. 

As surfers, we always think about avoiding crowds and surfing alone, but you’re literally surfing these waves alone, by yourself. Does it ever get weird or lonely?
It never gets weird. It’s pretty epic [laughs]. You’ll be out there, and it’s like, ‘Damn, there’s another one!’ And I’ve thought about that a bunch. I wish sometimes my brothers could be out there, and we’ve done some trips and gotten some good waves, but it’s hard to line up. It’s crazy when you’re surfing by yourself. You’re surfing so many waves. It feels like you’re in a wave pool. You can draw so many different lines and new approaches to a wave that you wouldn’t if there were other people around. For me, I get in my own little space. The thing that I found crazy is that when I’m home, I can surf for six hours, but when I’m surfing alone, it’s like three hours max because you catch so many waves. You’re going in after three hours, so fried, and it’s still firing, and you’re like, shit, should I still be out there?’ But you can’t even stand up anymore.

It’s easy to think that everything’s been discovered, but there’s still a lot out there.
I spent a month surfing by myself. Every few days, I was surfing a new wave by myself. Then we went to Cloudbreak, and there are 100 people out. I was shell-shocked. I was like, ‘Why am I out here doing this?’ It seemed crazy. We’d spent so much time away from everything, only to come back to one of the most crowded waves in the world.

How long were you sailing?
March through November. I went home once for a week, then again for a little longer because I got dengue fever. We were going home for a couple of days, and I came down with it at home. I was really lucky. It would have been pretty radical to come down with it on the boat. I was sick for probably two weeks. But otherwise, it was March through November, living on the boat.

That’s a long time to be on the boat together as a family?
Yeah, camping vibes [laughs]. We kind of got the hang of it. About halfway through the trip, we fell into a pretty good rhythm. But it’s definitely pretty wild. You have two rainy days in a row, and you feel just how small the boat is. 

Especially with a toddler. You gotta get them out and run them…
That was the good thing about Fiji, there was usually an island a day or two away, so we were always stopping. We’d let him run around on the beach, and we’d stay for a couple of days before moving on to the next spot. Or we’d show up at a little village, and all these kids would come running out. It’s such a cool thing, they’re running around, playing together, nobody speaks any English, and it’s epic. 

Your next voyage is through the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and then points south?
Yep, we’re in the Bahamas, then through the Panama Canal, and I’d like to get down to the Marquesas Islands, then down into Tahiti and into the South Pacific before maybe finishing in New Zealand in November or December. 

Then you’d come home to Hawaii for the winter?
That’s the plan, but it keeps changing. We’ll see. We may hang around New Zealand for a while and just come home for shorter periods of time. 

Feeling good about the boat?
We sold the 48-footer and got one slightly bigger. That’s why I’m in the Bahamas. We’re here, outfitting it and figuring things out. As we talked about, the other one was a pretty small space. It’s a really similar boat, so the learning curve hasn’t been that crazy. It’s another cat, this one’s 60 feet. 

Congrats, man, it’s fun to see you out there doing all this.
Thanks. It’s really just committing to it. You have to commit, see how much you can learn, and how far you can go. 

Watch the full-length edit of Edge of the Ocean | Vela presented by YETI here.