The Beginning

Richie Fitzgerald once gave me a tour of the surf spots going down the coast of Ireland. We were young men in an age before cell phones. There was no way back then to tell when a swell was coming or how big it would be. It was pure luck that a giant swell hit during my first visit to Ireland.

I was living on the North Shore at the time, taking a year off from university. Richie met me, put me in his van and showed me all the reefs. Each one was bigger, shallower, and scarier than the next. They were all by Hawaiian standards A+, and all of them empty. The last one, Mullaghmore, had not yet been surfed.

Five years later Richie and I were surfing Mullaghmore together.

Ten years after that, Richie called me up and asked me to look after the future king of Irish surfing who was then an up-and-coming grom.

At that time, Richie had retired from surfing Mullaghmore. Mortality leans on you heavy when you have kids and a wife. Mullaghmore surfers always remain friends with the possibility of being killed out there.

Nobody had pull vests back then. You could measure our fear by the numberof life vests we wore. A surfer can’t move much in three vests, but back then we only towed in. We didn’t need a lot of mobility.

“What’s the craic sham?” he said, on the day he asked me to look after the future king.

“Whatup Ricardo?” I said. Richie, from Bundoran, and me, from New York, always greeted each other with our local colloquialisms.

“Hai sham here c’mere to me, there is this kid Conor Maguire. He wants to have a craic at Mullaghmore tomorrow. Will you look after him?”

“I’m actually watching young Conor out of my window,” I explained. At that moment, he was, in fact, putting on a tube riding clinic at one of the slabs in front of the beach shack I was renting. “Tell him to be at my house at seven bells.”

“Ahh sham. He’s a great wee fella, our Conor. I gave him my board and he’s got two life jackets.”

Conor had his wetsuit on already when he arrived at my beach shack the next day before dawn. He was also wearing Richie's two vests and had Richie’s Irish flag colored, tri-color tow board under his arm. Both the vests and the board were really way too big for him. The shoulders on those lifejackets reached to the top of his young head and he looked like he was drowning just standing there. But buried under all those lifejackets was Conor’s nice, polite smile.

In the harbor I cinched his life jackets up as best I could. He hung on to the back handle of the ski as we scooted around the low tide rocks. He didn’t talk, but sometimes he laughed his laugh that he applies to all things.

We drove to the channel and watched the first set break. Then another. The swell was huge, I remember. There were lots of waves and a good wind. Conor jumped from ski to ski while the grown ups got their fill of waves, which got bigger and better as the morning wore on..

“Grab the rope.” I said to Conor after a while.

“Any advice?” he asked.

“You’re a good surfer,” I told him. “You got barrelled on every wave in front of my house yesterday.”

“Thanks,” he said, and smiled that smile of his and laughed his laugh.

“Surf just like that,” I said. Conor looked at me. I could see him doing his sums, adding my advice to his mental visualization of what was about to come.

“You scared?”

“Scared shitless,” he answered, then laughed his laugh. He jumped off the ski and all the life jackets rode up over his face. He struggled to get into the straps on the board with all of that inflation, then struggled to stand up while holding a tow rope for the first time. From my perspective, it looked like a tow board was wrestling an empty life vest. The life vest won just in the nick of time for the next set, and I drove Conor into the first Mullaghmore wave of his life.

The Profile

My theory is that big waves are like surrogate mothers to big wave surfers. Big wave surfers depend on their preparation, the chasing of swell, the inevitable wait, the relentless anxiety, day-of action, and - finally - the release of stress with a blast of dopamine that only big wave surfing provides. My theory is half psychology, half philosophy, developed while writing profile articles on surfers who moved their entire lives or travel from anywhere in the world to surf the wave at Mullaghmore Head. Among those chosen best in the world, I've practiced extracting juicy and interesting tidbits of each surfer’s upbringing while writing about them. I’ve written about Mully’s regulars, the locals and the die-hard blow-ins.

My “interviews” with these big wave surfers are ideally in a musty pub over pints of creamy Guinness. Or, I’ll invite them to the farm where my family and I live, and ask them personal questions while they’re weeding or digging.

I’ll admit I stalked Tom Lowe in the sauna to get the juice for his profile (see the SUMMER25 issue of Session Magazine for that one).

Most surfers are forthcoming. They share all kinds of secrets. Of all the profiles of big wave surfers I’ve done for Session Mag, only the enigmatic Ryan Watts gave me trouble as he did not like to talk about himself. But eventually, after a week of persistent questioning, Ryan left me a voice message that was totally revealing. That’s how I got what I wanted.

I made more of an effort with Conor than with anybody for his interview. Here is what I gleaned.

A toddler in nappies, Conor would often stare out his granny’s small cottage window. The cottage sat on the cliff overlooking the most surfed reefs in Ireland. The next reef along the coastline was a shallow, slabby wave with a long, technical barrel. It was a perfect training ground for the next reef along the coast which was a bigger and scarier beast. Past that one, on the horizon, sits Mullaghmore. His granny was tolerant, compassionate, and healthy. She grew her own vegetables and caught her own fish and harvested seaweed from the reef in front of her cottage. Granny took care of other kids in town as well as her grandson. When Conor talks about granny, he’s uncharacteristically whimsical and misty.

And that’s about it.

In my opinion, Conor Maguire is the kindest, most polite, humble, well-balanced, professional athlete out there at Mullaghmore. But he is not forthcoming about his upbringing. When I tried to ply him with pints, all I got was that little bit of imagery. The memory of him as a kid looking down the coast, past all the same reef breaks that my friend Richie showed me, to where he could see the all-powerful Mullaghmore, the biggest and baddest wave of them all. He told me he imagined that one day he would surf it. This is the only insight into his youth that I got.

No matter how hard I tried, that's all he gave me.

The Revolution

The year I took Conor out to Mullaghmore there was a great philosophical shift in big wave surfing. The paddle-in revolution and a new crew had arrived at Mullaghmore. They had shown the old motorheads down south that the big right-hand barrel that breaks, Jaws-like, under a giant cliff was surfable. Jet ski assistance for riding a wave was not necessary. Fergal Smith became king of Mullaghmore then. Next, it was Tom Lowe. They changed the philosophy of big wave riding in Ireland forever.

Fergal and Tom paddled out from the headland. They sat, waited patiently and actually paddled into the waves. The earlier crew from Mullaghmore, after watching this revolution, after witnessing the next generation paddle into these critical waves, found themselves drifting away toward their families, jobs and Sunday naps on comfortable couches.

But the new crew lived far down the south coast. For a couple years, with the old crew napping and the new crew not driving up for every swell, there were many good days of big waves at Mullaghmore with nobody to ride them.

Me and Conor would take the ski out then. We took turns learning how to paddle in like Fergal and Tom. One of us would surf while the other ran rescue on an old, beat up jet-ski. When it was my turn to paddle, I was the most scared I have ever been in the ocean. Sometimes I only caught one wave. Sometimes I caught none. Sometimes I just paddled out to the lineup and paddled back to the ski again. I’d be so scared that every muscle in my arms was cramping.

One day I was paddling away from that cold monster of fear. When I got back to the channel I said, “Your turn”, my voice shaking.

“How are you feeling?” I’d remember to ask him.

“Shitting myself,” Conor always answered while smiling his smile.

Conor paddled toward his fear. He always caught waves.

Then, one day out there in the lineup alone, I could see him smiling, happy and comfortable. He was at play. He was happy, finally spending time with the monsters he had watched from granny’s window for all those years.

We were cleaning the ski that evening when I said, “One day, you will be king of Mullaghmore”.

Conor smiled politely then laughed his laugh that applies to all things.

“Who is the king now?” he wanted to know.

There are only two other people whom I had ever seen as content, serene and happy while sitting on a giant paddleboard in the lineup at Mullaghmore: Fergal Smith and Tom Lowe.

“You will be,” I said. “You will be.”

When I recalled that memory to Conor and asked him how he was able to be comfortable sitting alone at one of the world’s scariest waves, he just laughed his laugh.

 “Those were pretty special times,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, “How is it, do you think, you became so comfortable out there? What was going on in your life that allowed you to bypass the fear and anxiety and just enjoy yourself out there?”

I am sure he found solace in the complete absorption that big waves can give. I am sure my “surrogate mother” theory applies to him too. But Conor gave me no further insight that day or any other.

The Plague

Time passed.

Mullaghmore became a bucket list spot for professional big wave surfers, and suddenly, Conor and I didn’t have to surf it alone anymore. There were always other people in the lineup.

That year, just as the winter big wave season ended, humans stopped doing everything they normally did and hid inside from a virus. It was the summer without jets flying in the sky. The summer without the noise of engines.

Winter came with a five-kilometre travel restriction firmly in place. I was still renting the shack on the beach, and I could walk five kilometers one way and stand at Conor’s granny’s house. Five kilometers the other way took me to the rock you jump off of to surf Mullaghmore.

When people bitch about COVID, I have to button my lip. I surfed my favorite reefs alone. As an English teacher at the local high school, I pretended to care about my students. I pretended to be bummed out like everybody else. But I hoped the lockdown would last forever.

Then the first big North Atlantic swell lit up the charts.

It was scary enough surfing the four-foot slab in front of my shack. But solo access to one of the best big waves in the world holds another level of anxiety.

That first storm began as a hurricane and spun its way up the east coast of Ireland. It joined forces with a system south of Iceland where it grew larger and covered the entire Atlantic Ocean. High pressure sat over Ireland and brought us rare sunshine and a light offshore wind. This fifty-year storm wasn’t gonna hit Waimea or Bells Beach. This fifty-year storm was sending the full force of its swell straight toward Mullaghmore.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked Conor.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What are we gonna do?”

“I think if we go out, we will probably be arrested. Our mug shots will be on the cover of the Irish Times.”

“We’d be the biggest arseholes in Ireland.”

“Officially the biggest assholes in Ireland.”

“With any luck,” Conor said, “the swell will die.”

Five days out and the forecast swell had bigger numbers than anything I’d ever seen in my twenty years of surfing Mullaghmore.

Three days out and the number went even bigger.

“What are we gonna do?” We asked each other. We introspectively asked ourselves, we asked the Universe, we asked God.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked Conor again the day before he became king of Mullaghmore.

The next day, the king wielded the power for the good of his people. Conor rounded up his knights, gave a media pass to all his best men. We were now working on the production of Conor Maguire: Riding the Fifty-Year Storm. RedBull provided the insurance and actual media badges to get us past the authorities. Conor was going to ride the biggest wave ever ridden in Ireland that day.

Conor wore the pressure of this onslaught media event like an exquisitely made armor that nobody else could, or even wanted, to wear. The charts stayed stable.

This was five years ago, and when I brought this memory up to Conor, he was weeding at my farm.

“I often think how hard it must be to be a pro big wave guy,” I said. “You have to show up on the craziest days and perform - no matter how you feel. But this was a different kind of swell, the biggest ever, and during the height of a pandemic? The pressure on you that day was immense because it was all about … well, you. How did you handle that?” I asked. “I would have been a puddle of anxiety.”

Conor just laughed his laugh that applies to all things.

“I’m a pretty private person,” was the only revealing thing he said.

The Conor Day

It was still dark when I arrived that day to take Conor out to Mullaghmore.

Usually, on a giant swell, the harbour surges gently, both rising and receding. But that morning, when my headlights lit up the harbour, it looked like it was already high tide. However, ten seconds later the water drained, and the same tide looked low. Then, it filled up again - higher than before - pushing rocks and plastic fishing industry detritus under the wheels of my rusty old pick up.

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed to my dog.

I had a sudden urge to look over the break wall. I let my dog out of the truck and started walking towards the path through the break wall. I felt something looming above me. It was like how Wile E. Coyote could sense the anvil falling. Then, a house-sized lump of water dropped straight out of the sky and landed right in front of me. It sounded like the crack of thunder when lightning is close enough to smell ozone. The boiling water drained away over my feet and I saw four boulders, the smallest about a bowling ball size. A wave had pushed them up and over the twenty-foot break wall. Another three steps and my life would have ended in a way I never would have guessed.

“Holy shit,” I said agai. After nearly being pulverised by the rocks, I sat in the truck and watched the harbor fill up and empty out again with each breaking wave. It started to get light, but I didn't drive up to the headland. I can’t watch Mullaghmore break from land. I still get nauseous with anxiety.

One look at the harbor and I knew I didn’t want to surf. Nobody in their right minds would. Except the king who had just pulled into the harbor.

“Did you look at it?” I asked.

 “Yea.” He laughed his laugh and smiled his polite smile, “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“How do you feel?” I asked him, while watching the harbor water move in a way water in a harbor should never move.

“Scared shitless,” he said, but looked relaxed. He laughed his laugh. “Where did those big rocks come from?”

I pointed toward a heaven that I sometimes wished I believed in, and Conor smiled his polite smile.

Conor went out and surfed six of the biggest set waves of that historic day. The whole world was stunned by his poise, his bravery, and his modesty. The whole way through the day, incredibly, he laughed that laugh and smiled his smile.

I rushed to the sauna after the session. I knew he always went to the sauna after a big session. There - maybe - the sauna might allow some insight to be revealed into the newly crowned king.

“How did you laugh and smile through the biggest swell ever to hit Ireland?” I wanted to ask him.”

“What are you running from?” I’d ask. Or, “What is it you are looking for?”

“What is missing from your psyche that allows you to do what you did?” Or, “What is it you have that the rest of us don’t?”

But Conor was pulling out of the parking lot just as I was pulling in.

The king just gave me a polite wave and smiled his smile as he drove by.