Moments Of Cold Water Surf

Welcome to the cold fringes of the earth. Where seals bob their heads in empty lineups and salmon breach for nobody but themselves. Here the short days of winter flow together, dark waves spitting over cold rock. Up here and out there is loneliness, time passes at a different rhythm, light takes on a different shade. At the end of these muddy tracks there is a certain kind of dream, one where hard offshores blow all day into waves of perfect symmetry. There is a grace in the lack of recording, the desire to go beyond the map, to seek and in the journey find everything.

Surfing in cold water shifts and evolves, each participant living their own subjective and temporal experience, exploring their own limits. It is from these uncrowded edges, from these dreams of empty space and silence, that Finisterre grew.

Over time we understood that the North Atlantic was wilder than anyone imagined. The conveyor belt of low pressure systems that start marching each autumn do so with a power and beautiful malevolence that few could have guessed at.

All of that raw and savage energy meets surprisingly perfect geology, as it always has, the difference has been a new cast of characters ready to meet it head on. Travellers and local alike, in pursuit of immortality, glory and the sheer insane joy of the thing. The old human impulse of walking to the next headland, paddling around the corner or out to sea, has activated and inspired a new generation of surfers. As ever, many of the best things go undocumented, heroic deeds and actions unwitnessed in the half darkness of a winter morning. But the outsider beauty of it is a binding and uniting force.

The moments captured here document twenty years of cold water surf.

Through this era, reputations were forged under Irish cliffs and over Scottish flagstones. It was a new era of discovery and for years whispers were the only currency. But alongside new wetsuit technology, new media changed everything. These waves were not poor reflections of the rest of the world. They were thicker, meaner, heavier – up there with the wild edges of Pacific islands and dusty antipodean desert tubes. What followed was a rush of legitimacy where the mind-blowing perfection that happens every winter became clear to the world. Local talent emerged from seemingly nowhere and each season the bar got raised, again and again. Yet despite decades of exposure, everything remains slightly off the map. Any journey to these fringes still requires rolling the dice. There is a purity in this fickleness, a dedication to this thing we are all chasing.

The camaraderie inspired by this shared joy forged an intensely strong community. Finisterre arose from this ecosystem, its growth propelled by a newly awakened interest in searching for cold waves. They drew together a group of ambassadors, diverse individuals who were out there seeking, capturing the spirit of discovery and adventure and commitment. The company has supported so many of them, some for so long, that its evolution is closely matched to the evolution of their identity and indeed the evolving spirit of British surfing.

“The sea is the common ground that holds us all together,” founder Tom Kay says, “but I just learn so much from these people. There’s such an exchange of ideas. I really enjoy supporting their respective endeavours, I feel lucky to be able to do that.”