Surfing and Me - Chapter Two

In 1995, I’d graduated University, and I was starting a BMX shop with my best mate Dan Beamish and sadly by January 1997, it was over, and I was on a flight to Australia to put my Tourism degree into practice, travel and experience Australia. When I arrived in Sydney I soon went down to Bondi Junction and bought my first ever longboard. A Sam Egan 9’1” Single fin, pintail with red and black pinstripes. This thing was epic, and shaped by an absolute legend of Australian board building.  I rode this board at Manly beach, and Palm beach  and then took it up to Byron Bay where my real addiction to Surfing really began.

I was 27 years old, I could stand up, go left and right, put in a turn or two, and that was about it. I’d been a weekend warrior for years,  but I knew in my heart I was a surfer. I was making an investment into the lifestyle that I had been pretty obsessed with since I'd seen that photo in a magazine, or Greg Watts had an impact on my life (part one), I was obsessed and yet never touched the water until I was 19. 

Byron Bay was a dream place for me. I had already landed a job at a Backpackers hostel as a driver, so plenty of time to surf between collecting people from the bus stop, touting them as they got off the bus and selling the benefits of our hostel to them. This was easy as we were the closest hostel to the beach, literally over the train tracks and in front was one of the best waves in Byron Bay, ‘The Wreck’.  I surfed the wreck nearly every day for 8 months when it was good. We’d also head up the road to ‘The Pass’ and ‘Wategos Bay’, both iconic places and perfect longboard waves.  

This was what I was drawn to, the style of the longboard. The roots set back in the late 50’s through to the mid 60’s. Surfers like Phil Edwardes, Steve Bigler, Nat Young and MIdget Farrelly all inspired generations to adopt the style needed to surf gracefully. I loved it and that's what I wanted to do. End of!!

I joined the Byron Bay Malibu Club and was taken under the wing of my dear friend Debby Ginger, and was honoured to represent the wonderful community. I was the only Pommie, and was so stoked to be part of this and something that inspired me when I later tried to recreate a club like this back in Brighton with the Harbour Malibu Club, and I hope that it did for a little while, until I moved to Cornwall. 

Sadly I snapped my Sam Egan at The Wreck, but replaced it with two beauties from Byron Shaper  and club stalwart Brett Munro. I travelled with these boards up to Noosa, and back down the East Coast to Sydney. Australia was a blast and by the time I left in 1998 I was 100% blinkered by surfing. 

When I returned to the UK, I was lost, I did not want to be home but my visa had expired and I was ready for another adventure. After two months on a building site, I moved to Cornwall and worked with my old boss where I had done my college work experience. I stayed long enough to become a qualified surfing instructor, and then got on a plane to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. I taught surfing 6 days a week, surfed after work every day and on my days off. I learnt to surf bigger waves. Waves of consequence I suppose, but as one of only six surfers riding longboards on the island it was a ‘real trip’. Surfing a bright yellow longboard on an island know for harsh localism was daunting, but I was not there to upset locals, to drop in, to be everything you see today in the water. I’d just come from Australia, where I'd spent most of my time surfing with Byron locals, like my Bosses Dougal and Lachlan Pennefarther, Brett Munro and the club members, and a bunch of Wreck Locals, and not had a single run in with anyone. Surfing is about respect and if you're going to invest, this is the key. Standing up is easy, gaining respect isn’t if you're going to be an idiot.  In Lanzarote, I lived in a small village called Famara, and because I eat in the restaurants, drank in the bars, learnt to speak enough Canarian to get by, and as a sunburnt, red faced, blond haired surfer on a bright yellow longboard I stood out in the line up. But I was slowly accepted and because I sat wide on the peak at placelike La Santa, which was a more friendly wave, I didn’t get in the way, I never expected to be on the main peak, I was whistled into waves, the local lads, let me have some beauties, every day. 

I had one run in with a Canarian local at the renowned wave called ‘The Slab’ or the ‘esquera’ as it is locally called. It was my fault, I was paddling out through the peak, and not out and around,  and as he paddled for the wave he caught my leash, he went absolutely mental and all I could do was say sorry ‘Pardone’, over and over. After a while, and after seeing him every time I surfed there and over on La Santa, I apologised until it became funny, and not that we became friends but we laughed when we saw each other. He was the one who would then whistle me into the waves. 

The only other run in I had was with a young lad who’d shout at me for supposedly dropping in on him, and turned out to be an English Timeshare salesman. He’d shouted at me in Spanish, and when I continued to say ‘No Comprende!’ he finally shouted at me in perfect English, which absolutely made my blood boil, when I confronted him, calling him out on his behaviour, and that he in fact had taken off behind me, as I was already up and riding, and there were only three of us in the water anyway so his reaction was totally pointless,after a few expletives and the offer of taking it to the beach, he backed down. He was the epitome of what I dislike about some surfers. He was playing at being a local and it backfired on him. The real locals at breaks like La Santa,  and San Juan, worked, like myself in Famara, and I got on with them just fine. 

I suppose this post is really about what I learnt in those years. Yes I progressed my surfing and by the time I returned back to Brighton, I was working on aspects like noseriding and drop knee turns, but they were still aspirational. Two years surfing as much as possible in some amazing waves and yet I was still a foot from the nose and a little stiff!! But these two years, this chapter in my surfing life, from 27 until 30 years old, was unreal.  I wish those surfers new to the sport today would follow this path, go and travel to a place where you daren’t upset a local, learn the unwritten rules (a post I’ll write soon), which is all over the internet so there’s no excuse, but at the same time have as much fun surfing as possible, ride what you want to ride, and just enjoy the progression.  Australia and Lanzarote taught me so much about surfing, but it was also the experience of learning the other, more important elements that I often reflect upon. I reckon two years was also needed to learn wave judgement properly, how to read the weather, although my father was a yachtsman so some of this was passed down earlier in life. 
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These two years have long passed and many chapters have come since. I’m no champion, I’m no standout surfer, but somewhere in this journey you might relate.  Twenty three years have passed since I returned home from travelling and when I took up a teaching job at a college near Brighton, purely for the holidays, the lifestyle of a surfer really kicked in.  Chapter three of this journey saw me travelling to some amazing places, surfing with friends, travelling with girlfriends, and on my own as surfing very quickly became an addiction. 

Note: As far as photos are concerned, sadly I have lost all trace in storage somewhere. If I find a few lifestyle shots I'll edit and add them in later. Whilst in Oz, I had my camera stolen so most of those memories are etched into a very fuzzy brain from that trip. Lanzarote, was pre-digital camera and I didn't even have one to take back then. In addition to this, no one really wants to take photos of surfers that aren't that good, and back then, I wasn't that good, but just to add some visual colour here's a recent one by the amazing 'Warbey', taken a Sennen a couple of years back. 

So Stay tuned to the Radius for part three of 'Surfing and Me where I have got a few more photos, just to prove I can surf!!