Two young Californian surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, set out with filmmaker Bruce Brown on a low-budget premise: since it is always summer somewhere, why not follow the season around the globe chasing the perfect wave? The film tracks their route through West Africa, South Africa, Australia, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Hawaii, with Brown's own dry narration standing in for dialogue. At Cape St. Francis in South Africa they find what the film presents as a flawless, empty right-hand break, a scene that became the movie's signature image. Local surfers, fishermen, and curious onlookers appear at each stop, some seeing a surfboard for the first time. Shot on 16mm with a handheld camera and a shoestring budget, the footage favors long, unbroken rides over editing tricks, letting the surfing itself carry the pacing. Made in 1966, it predates the sport's commercial boom and shows surfing as a fringe pursuit rather than an industry, tracked wave by wave across four continents in a single circuit of the globe.