Ireland

Dispensing with political boundaries, the first surfer on the Emerald Isle was probably a customs officer from Britain named Ian Hill, who first rode a paipo (bellyboard) at Spanish Point in 1961. Once he had seen surfers riding malibus in Bude during the summer of 1963, he finally tracked down Bob Head (Bilbo co-founder) in the famous Mawgan Porth chicken shack and paid £20 for his first board. In April 1964, Hill entered the water at Castlerock in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Nobody had told him about wax, so the first session was spent slipping off into the freezing water. A home-made shorty was designed by chalking out his outline on a sheet of neoprene and off he went to surf the west coast from Donegal to Cork without seeing another surfer. Transferred to Plymouth in February 1965, when he returned to Portrush on holiday in ’67, Alan Duke and friends had already hit the water. Surfing emerged in the south almost simultaneously. Kevin Cavey spotted a story on surfing in The Readers’ Digest, which led to early experiments with an adapted skimboard and a more sophisticated craft constructed of marine ply with insulation plastic on the bottom. These prototypes handled so awfully that only kneeboarding was possible so Cavey soon ordered a balsa kit from English board-maker Tiki, then left for Hawaii and California. He took his beatings at Sunset Beach, before heading to Rincon and Huntington, where friendly locals lent him his first fibreglass board. This experience strengthened his belief that Ireland held loads of potential for surfriding and he returned stoked after a year on the road. The Tiki kit was assembled and ridden at Gyles Quay, Dundalk in May 1965 but Kevin Cavey was already a fibreglass convert and ordered a new board from Doug Wilson of Bilbo at a cost of £33.00. Kevin took a stand at the 1966 Boat Show, which he decorated with Greg Noll Waimea Bay posters, (courtesy of his friend Pat McNulty of Surfer magazine) and displayed a 15’ safety board from the Red Cross. He met a few surfers like Roger Steadman who had brought fibreglass boards from Newquay. Spring 1966 found Kevin, his brother Colm, Patrick Kinsella and American Tom Casey off on surfari to Strandhill in Co. Sligo. Next stop was Bundoran where a westerly storm introduced them to the rocks that many surfers have since inspected up close. A little further north they found friendlier surf at Rossnowlagh where they met up with the young groms Brian, Conor, Barry and William Britton. From Rossnowlagh they moved up to Cruit Island, Marble Strand and Portrush, hooking up with known correspondent, Desmond 'Bow' Vance. At the same time, a group of youngsters in the Portrush/Portstewart area led by Alan Duke (4 times Irish champion) started surfing and began travelling to the west coast where they met up with other surfers. Duke was famous for riding a 6’6” in the 9ft’ plus era. The Surf Club of Ireland was founded in 1966 at Bray, County Wicklow. That same year Cavey represented Ireland at the World Surfing Championships in California, crossing boards with Rodney Sumpter and Nat Young before bowing out in the quarter finals. In 1967 the first National Championships were held and naturally Kevin Cavey took the title with Eamon Mathews second and Ted Alexander third. The first Intercounties’ Championships were held in Rossnowlagh in 1968, where County Down beat County Wicklow in the final. Ironically neither county has featured in a final since. By the end of the ‘60s members of the Surf Club of Ireland began to form other clubs leaving the Surf Club of Ireland to represent the Dublin area. Five local groups had evolved by early 1970 including the South Coast, in Tramore (now known as the T-Bay Surf Club), the West Coast (Lahinch), the Rossnowlagh (Donegal), the North Shore (Portrush) and the Fastnet (Cork) Surf Clubs. The same year they combined to establish the Irish Surfing Association, which became and remains the governing body of surfing in Ireland. Kevin Cavey and Roger Steadman formed C & S Surfboards, the first Irish board label, featuring the shamrock as its logo.

The national association has hosted the European Amateur Championships on three separate occasions: 1972, 1985 and 1997. Rossnowlagh surfer Grant Robinson has been the most successful Irish surfer at international level taking the European Masters title in France in 1987 and again in Ireland, a decade later, in 1997. Andy Hill has been the most prolific, already representing all Ireland for 11 years, winning the Irish Championships six times and achieving a personal best result of 32nd in the 1992 World Amateurs in France. Quiksilver hosted the World Masters Championships in Bundoran in 2001 bringing a host of world champions like Tom Curren, Martin Potter, Tom Carroll, Barton Lynch, Rabbit and Mark Richards together with local legends Grant Robinson and Henry Moore. A World Amateur Championship was planned but after much animated debate, the nations surfers voted against the idea, many feeling that enough was enough and that the spotlight should shift away from the increasingly crowded Irish waters.