Weaving a life on the waves

SURFING/Interview with Irish surfer Easkey Britton:Seán Kenny talks to the Donegal woman whose success riding the waves reflects a life of immersion in the sport. Her parents christened her Easkey after a wave off Sligo

She was always in deep. Surfing has flowed through her veins since salty, shivering days in early childhood. Family circumstance had it so. The Donegal coastline has drawn two generations of Brittons out on their boards.

Easkey inherited her father Barry's passion for the sport. He surfs now as he always has, for the love of it, eschewing competitions. The experience is its own reward. Easkey, though, competes.

Last year, aged 20, she dipped an uncertain toe in the waters of the British Women's Pro Tour. It was her first time on the circuit. Seven months later she was champion. She lies eighth of 31 competitors on this year's tour. A strong showing in the Welsh Open at Freshwater West on October 6th and 7th would give her a shot at retaining the title. Winning there last year pushed her into a position of contention.

Her success reflects a life of immersion in the sport. She has surfed for all but the first four or five of her 21 years. Peel away another couple of decades and you find that her father and uncles were among Ireland's first wave riders, trailblazers in a tiny revolution.

It started like this. Work promoting Irish tourism took Easkey's grandmother to California in the 1960s. The Beach Boys were oo-ee-ooing surfing into the popular consciousness and Mary Britton picked up two Malibu boards as souvenirs. They would, she thought, be novel props for her hotel back in Rossnowlagh. She was wrong. The boards were soon liberated from an ornamental life by her sons and put to practical use. Barry Britton and his brothers hit the water.

Barry met Easkey's mother, NC, through surfing around the northwest. They named their first daughter Easkey after a wave off Sligo. It was all open before her like the inviting arms of Donegal Bay. She recalls childhood trips from school to Rossnowlagh beach, chasing the dying winter daylight.

"I remember in wintertime when there was maybe an hour's light, max, after school. I'd change into a wetsuit in the back of the car. The beach would be empty then. I was the only person in my school who surfed. Now my younger sister has set up a school surf club. There's a whole crew of them hanging out, little surfing grommets (novices)."

Her success has helped boost the sport's profile locally. She has won three Irish women's titles in a row. With a symmetry beyond scripting, she first became national champion at Easkey. It was less providence than unbending commitment that brought her there.

"I've given a huge amount of time to it. I try to surf every day if I can. Some days I just paddle in. Sometimes I surf three times a day. It's been so much a part of my life since I was born that everything else is woven in around surfing, rather than trying to fit surfing in."

Here is how life is woven around surfing. She started at the University of Ulster in Coleraine last year, but lived 10 miles away in Portrush. Portrush has a beach. Coleraine does not.

More weaving: the Britton family home is 10 minutes from Rossnowlagh beach. During the minor lull between winters popularly known as summer, Easkey and her sister, Becky-Finn, live in a caravan on the beach. It is a place to sleep. As a home, though, it is defined by its proximity to the sea, to the wind and waves. Those 10 minutes count.

Life is woven around surfing, and the pattern is bold. A wave off the Cliffs of Moher called Aill na Searrach, to which the epithet "monster" is routinely attached, has lately been drawing surfers from around the world. In late April this year Easkey became the first woman to surf it.

She got a phone call from a friend: "Aill na Searrach is on." Adventure exerts a magnetic pull on her, so she packed the van and drove south. The feeling was a strange whirling paradox of vulnerability and invincibility.

"It was amazing. I've never experienced anything like it.

"I guess the fear is the whole magic of it. You feel that fear and then you want to overcome it."

Competitions, photo-shoots for her sponsors and adventure have taken her round the world: the Galapagos, Hawaii, Australia, Peru, Indonesia. More besides. It is a catalogue of the exotic. Shimmering cerulean seascapes have their charms, not least warm water, but these are travel-brochure conditions. Home is cold, grey grimness much of the time.

"The Irish climate is probably the hardest thing. Say, in Australia or Hawaii, it's warm all the time in the water. Whereas here, to stick it out all year round, through the winter, is really tough. It gets a bit bleak. You really have to motivate yourself to get out of bed to surf."

What compensation takes her out there on such days? Asking her to describe the experience brings a pause. Really, it is ineffable, too elemental for easy description.

"Before you go out into the water you can be full of stress and worries. Always afterwards you have this glow of energy. When you're surfing it's like nothing else really matters. In that sense it's meditative, in that you're in the present moment and not thinking about anything else. It kind of simplifies everything.

"And it's such an unpredictable environment, so that it's always fresh and exciting. You can't ever really reach your limits in it. It always pushes you and makes you want to go back out for more. And then there's just the incredible feeling of 'stoke'. It's an overused term, but that's what the essence of it is."

"Stoke" is the rush of it. The surfing argot twangs with the tones of Donegal. The northwest has become the locus of the sport in Ireland. Its topography is accommodating. On to its numerous beaches the great heaving mass of the Atlantic makes its final, crashing rolls.

A curious thing happened in last year's British Women's Pro Tour. Against competitors from around Britain and Ireland, Donegal surfers occupied the top three places. Easkey was followed in the rankings by Nicole Morgan and Shauna Ward. Something in the water?

"We all grew up surfing together in Bundoran. The three of us, because we all surf with each other, we push each other. But also, our families are involved in surfing and that definitely helps."

The sport is rippling outwards in Ireland. More people come to surfing each year. For many, it is an amusement of a weekend, an ephemeral, occasional rush. Others, like Easkey, hurl themselves headlong into the lifestyle, with near-devotional fervour.

"It's just gone boom-time now. I'm pretty divided on it. It's brilliant, especially for children, when they get into it. But it's quite a tribal thing. The waves are a limited resource, especially in summertime. Everyone gets really hungry and people are kind of scrapping for waves."

At the top end of the competitive sport, much progress has been made, particularly among Irish women. There is, of course, still plenty to be done.

"If you look at Australia, there's an amazing set-up for surfing there. It's treated like a real sport. Surfers are treated like athletes. They've got the climate for it in Australia, of course. But, saying that, you can find waves all year round here. It's been difficult because till now we haven't really had surfers surfing internationally. It's going to hopefully really take off. The standard's going up."

Next year she will take in the broader vista of the European Tour. For now, she has business in the Welsh Open.

She loves coming home to surf. Cold, damp, squally home. She paints a picture of trips with her family, rolling down the coast, nosing out good surf, the back of the van a jumble of variations on a theme: surfing magazines, surfboards, surfing stickers. The fabric of a life woven around the waves.

Easkey Britton

Born in Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal, Easkey Britton is 21. Her father and uncles were among Ireland's first surfers in the 1960s.

Easkey first competed in the (senior) Women's Irish National Championship aged nine. She is a three-time Irish national champion and represented the country at the European Surfing Championships in June this year.

In 2006 she became British Women's Pro Tour champion.

In April this year she became the first women to surf the enormous Aill na Searrach wave near the Cliffs of Moher.

She is a second-year student of Environmental Science and Psychology at the University of Ulster, Coleraine.