SEAN DUGGAN: For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with the ocean and riding waves.

ANNOUNCER: All that surfers crave are big waves and small crowds.

They found both in Ireland.

EVANS: They didn't even know that there was such fabulous waves in Ireland.

CAVEY: I wanted the world to know that Ireland, we actually had waves as good as anybody else.

Surfing is best kept to a small community.

ANNOUNCER: Should they tell the world or "Keep It a Secret"?

On Doc World.

♪ ♪ (birds chirping) SEAN DUGGAN: For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with the ocean and riding waves.

♪ ♪ The best days of my childhood were spent down at the Jersey Shore, riding waves and body surfing with my brothers and large extended family.

I was raised in an Irish-American household, the grandson of immigrants.

St. Patrick's Day was always a big deal in our home.

Irish music was in heavy rotation on the living room stereo and family portraits with my brothers required us wearing our Irish sweaters.

I first went to Ireland when I was seven.

Experiencing the beauty of the west coast and the powerful Irish surf created a deep connection within me to the homeland of my grandparents.

♪ ♪ For the past 20 years, surfing my closest break has required avoiding speed traps while driving through a dense, urban landscape, to reach Rockaway Beach, Queens.

♪ ♪ If there's any swell at all, you'll find me at 90th Street, along with dozens of other surfers.

♪ ♪ When I'm out there, in the chaotic water, with boards flying everywhere, I'll start to fantasize about finding a secret spot, where there are no crowds and perfect waves.

Those moments often bring me back to the empty surf I saw in Ireland as a kid, and I wonder, who were the lucky few to first ride those waves?

♪ ♪ Three years ago, I decided to find the surfers who pioneered the sport in Ireland, when Ireland was the ultimate secret spot, completely unknown to the outside surfing world, until one day, in 1962, when a Dublin boy saw a photograph that would change his life.

♪ ♪ (waves crashing) ♪ ♪ Born in Dublin in 1941, Kevin Cavey grew up obsessed with American culture.

KEVIN CAVEY: I was kind of a sucker for Hollywood and for the aspirations of California and the western world.

DUGGAN: Kevin would spend countless hours reenacting the war movies and Westerns of his Hollywood heroes.

CAVEY: As a schoolboy, I really enjoyed the ocean, and I used to swim as part of the swimming club.

We had races and you name it, it was a great world.

DUGGAN: One day, while on vacation in County Kerry, on the west coast of Ireland, Kevin would have his surfing epiphany.

CAVEY: We were sitting after we had had our evening meal, reading books, and I pulled up a war book and it had a cover with a guy shooting somebody else, you know.

And my friend's sister was there and she said, "How could you read a book like that?

Blood and guts, my God."

So I thought, "Oh my God," I felt a wave of embarrassment.

I threw down the book and I just picked up a "Reader's Digest."

I said, "Now, guys, look what I'm reading, "Reader's Digest,"" and to my surprise, there was a picture of a guy riding a wave in Hawaii.

So I felt almost indignant, said, "Oh my God, we have that, so I'm gonna make that what I do."

DUGGAN: In the 1940s, Bill Cavey, Kevin's entrepreneurial father, owned a successful wine shop on Camden Street in Dublin.

But in 1942 he would buy a small hotel, just 12 miles down the road, in Bray, a picturesque coastal town on the Irish Sea.

The Caveys prospered in the 1960s, expanding and renaming the family establishment the Royal Starlight Hotel.

The thriving business catered primarily to British tourists, and tour bus operators, like Sheffield United, who brought visitors from England and Northern Ireland.

♪ ♪ In the early 1960s, with no surfboard shops or surfers in Ireland, Kevin resorted to building his own boards.

Sadly, Kevin was not destined to become one of the great surfboard shapers.

Luckily, divine intervention would soon intercede on his behalf.

CAVEY: I was in the hotel, as usual, and the parish priest was there talking to my dad.

And my dad called me over and he said an extraordinary thing, he said, "Kevin here is into surfing."

And I thought, "God, what would he want to know about that for?"

And the priest said, "Oh, have you got the equipment?"

I said, "Well, I'm working on wooden boards at the moment, you know."

And he said, "Well, is that, is that what you, what you should do?"

I said, "Well, really fiberglass is what I really should have, but that's going to cost about 25 pounds."

And you know, that's a lot of money in this day and age.

And he said, "But you'll spread that over five, ten years."

He says, "You know, it'll only be a pound every six months, you know, you're gonna have no problem with it."

So he inspired me to buy the first surfboard, the first fiberglass surfboard.

The parish priest.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Surfing would become Kevin's portal, bringing Hollywood and California beach culture to Ireland.

And when Kevin wasn't working at the Starlight Hotel, he was spending every waking hour alone in the Irish Sea, transforming himself into a surfer.

ANN CAVEY: I genuinely feel that the first love of Kevin's life is and always will be the water.

I never realized the strength of that passion until we were going on our honeymoon and we arrived at the airport.

The first thing he did was to go to the desk, I said, "What are you doing?"

"I just have to do a message."

He wanted to make sure that the board was on the plane.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ DUGGAN: In the 1960s, business was booming for the Royal Starlight Hotel and the Cavey family.

And in 1965, Kevin jumped at the opportunity to visit America, representing the hotel on a promotional tour.

♪ ♪ Kevin bought a $99 unlimited ride Greyhound bus ticket that allowed him to cross the U.S., visiting major cities, as he headed to the land of his childhood dreams, California.

Immediately upon arriving in San Francisco, Kevin threw on a bathing suit and caught a trolley to Ocean Beach, where he would approach some local teenage surfers and ask if he could borrow a board.

It would be Kevin's first time surfing in the Pacific.

He paddled out, turned and caught the perfect ride back to shore.

Still feeling the adrenaline from his success at Ocean Beach, Kevin was inspired to visit a travel agency that afternoon, where he bought a plane ticket to the birthplace of surfing, Hawaii.

♪ ♪ Kevin rented a Mustang convertible, touring Oahu and surfing in paradise, and eventually worked his way to the legendary North Shore of Hawaii and Sunset Beach, where he experienced the thrill and fear of Hawaiian big wave surfing.

As Kevin basked under the Hawaiian sun, relishing the waning days of his surfing pilgrimage, Kevin Naughton, a teenager from Southern California, was on vacation with his family in Ireland.

KEVIN NAUGHTON: My parents emigrated from Ireland right before I was born.

They saw more opportunity in the States.

They continued to go back to, you know, to visit everybody regularly, and they would always take me with them.

So I hung around Galway a lot when I was very small and right through my teens.

But one moment that really stands out for me is after I had started surfing, and I was pretty keen into surfing at this point, I was about 14 or 15, and my parents were traveling from Galway up to see a friend in Carrickart.

So they dragged me along and I was kind of bored, 'cause I wasn't surfing.

And as we're driving through this little town called Bundoran, I looked out the window and I just saw this perfect A-frame, eight-foot peak breaking-- I was gasping, "This can't be real.

It's an illusion."

You know, I started screaming at my parents, "Stop the car!"

They, of course, said, "Oh, shut up."

"We'll get you an ice cream in the next town."

"No, no, I wanna see the wave!"

But they kept driving.

But it always stuck in me, that image of that wave, and I thought, "Man, there's waves here, you know, that's a real wave."

And there was, of course, not a sinner out, the water was empty, nobody was surfing around there back then, as far as I knew.

The waves there were as good as waves I'd surfed in California, but there were no crowds, I mean, nobody, not even other surfers.

I thought, this must be like stepping back not to the '50s, but to the '40s in California, before, you know, surfing was really even recognized, before anything.

And that's how I felt when I stepped into Ireland.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Little did Kevin Naughton know that Kevin Cavey was already beginning to evangelize the sport of surfing throughout Ireland.

CAVEY: When I got back from California, I put an advertisement in the paper looking for people who were interested in joining Ireland's first surf club.

And then I got letters in from different people who were interested in us coming together about surfing.

DUGGAN: In 1965, Roger Steadman, a surf-obsessed British marketing executive working at Unilever London, requested a transfer from headquarters to Ireland for one reason: waves.

♪ ♪ ROGER STEADMAN: As far as I was concerned, having been bitten by the surfing bug, and having looked at a map of Ireland and knowing where Ireland was, stuck out into the middle of the Atlantic, I just knew there had to be very good surf there.

♪ ♪ I had no hesitation in accepting the job in Ireland, believing I would be able to come and join an active surfing scene here.

I think I'd only been in Ireland for a few months and there was a boat show.

There I found a stand with a lot of pictures of Hawaiian, you know, girls dancing and some planks of wood, but no surfboards.

But, I did meet Kevin.

I told Kevin that I was a surfer.

And I said, "Where do you surf around here?"

CAVEY: Roger was astounded to find that this surfing thing was happening, 'cause he had found no evidence of surfing in Ireland and he was right.

We put our heads together and we said, "Look, we can't develop surfing in Ireland if we don't have the equipment."

So we set up a little business.

And we used this to bring boards in, and sell the boards, not to make money, but to actually help develop the sport that way.

We were evangelical in the way in which we, you know, went about promoting it.

DUGGAN: One of Roger and Kevin's first converts was Roger's new coworker at Unilever, Dublin, Harry Evans.

VIVIENNE EVANS: My father was hardly a typical Irishman.

He wasn't in the pub every night.

My father was also a fitness fanatic.

In 1966, Roger introduced to my father a sport that none of us had ever heard of before.

He encouraged my father to join him on a weekend surfing trip over to the west of Ireland.

My father jumped at the opportunity.

Thus began not only his adventures into this extraordinary world, but my exit out of the domesticity that was looming on the horizon for me.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Vivienne Evans, born in Dublin in 1957, was the fearless and adventurous daughter of Harry and Carmel Evans.

The third oldest of ten children, she would grab her first board at the age of ten and begin surfing the frigid North Atlantic ocean.

EVANS: At the age of eight or nine, I already had six or seven younger siblings.

My parents seemed to be absent quite a bit of the time.

I think in the case of my mother, it was because she was in maternity hospitals giving birth to yet another child.

And my father was working many long hours.

Really an enormous amount of responsibility fell on the shoulders of myself and my two sisters.

But surfing gave me this complete sense of freedom.

So here I found myself participating in this man's sport.

And yet, from the men's perspective it was, "Get the kid in.

Bring her along."

That was a huge thing for me.

I mean, how could I not grow up to be quite a confident person in this kind of an environment?

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Kevin and Roger would set off together around Ireland on epic surf safaris to spread the gospel of surfing and sell C&S surfboards.

I think the first place that we actually came to was Tramore.

And we demonstrated our surfboards on the little waves that were there.

I believe this board is, I bought it in early 1970, about 1972.

As you can see the sign here is C&S, which stands for Cavey & Steadman.

They were importers of surfboards from Bilbo and had their own logo on it and the whole lot.

Considering it's from the early '70s, I don't think it's in too bad a condition.

I think you could possibly still, if I didn't have so much weight, maybe I might be able to surf on it.

DEREK MUSGRAVES: When we moved to Tramore in 1961, surfing hadn't been introduced into Ireland, but Tramore being a seaside resort, there was swimming and lifesaving, and we got very involved in that.

Then later on, when Kevin Cavey and Roger Steadman came, it's the first time I ever saw a surfboard.

You might have seen them on films and that, but that was the first time we saw it in real life.

DAMIAN MUSGRAVES: As soon as we tried surfing, we were hooked straight away.

The sensation couldn't be repeated and it felt tremendously fast, although it probably wasn't, but the... but it was exciting.

HUGH O'BRIEN MORAN: Kevin Cavey from Bray was on a mission to get surfing up and going throughout Ireland.

And he left the board here for a week, and he'd come back after the week, the board wasn't on dry land.

It just didn't come into it at all.

We were all out surfing it, one after the other.

DEREK MUSGRAVES: When Kevin arrived in Tramore, it was like Elvis arrived.

He had the surfboard, maybe even two surfboards, and that's when the bug hit.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MORAN: The very first trips that we made, we went from Tramore up to Rossnowlagh, Donegal, and every wave that we arrived at, every beach had never been surfed before, so we were hugely excited about it.

♪ ♪ EAMON MATTHEWS: When you got to some place and there was a wave breaking, "Great, let's do it."

You tended not to go looking for other spots.

♪ ♪ WILLIE BRITTON: It was sort of an age of exploration, we were just traveling around, and nobody knew what we were doing, they couldn't figure it out, they all thought we were crazy.

♪ ♪ There was an old guy up the road, he said, "There's some boy down there walking on the water.

You were doing some wave sliding, were you?"

They wouldn't know what surfing was.

VIVIENNE EVANS: We'd go into the icy waters with these flimsy wetsuits on, and the key to our ultimate survival was coming out, running up to the promenade, into the car and pulling out the most beautiful bottle of Irish whiskey, and everybody getting a slug.

A huge, massive slug.

And somebody else would have made hot water bottles.

So we'd stand on the hot water bottles, rub life back into our aching bones and knock back the whiskeys.

And I acquired a marvelous taste for it by the time I was 13.

♪ ♪ ♪ Hey!

♪ The surf culture in Ireland, even though it was one big, happy family, you know, there was, I realized early on that there were two distinct groups of surfers in Ireland.

You know, there was the very, you know, I would call them, like, the guys in the blue blazers who were like, "We're gonna make "surfing part of mainstream, we're gonna have contests, we're all gonna show up in ties and, you know, wave to the media and all that," and that was good.

But then there was the other crew who were... sort of represented the renegade element that surfing, you know, was about as well.

And those were more like the guys from the north.

Alan and Davy and Martin Lloyd and a few others, who kind of represented a counterculture.

In a good way, but it was definitely counterculture, you know.

♪ ♪ They were doing something that was unique, and they knew it was unique, and it was kind of beyond the comprehension of the general community around them which made it even better.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Guided by a do-it-yourself ethos, the Belfast crew would develop surfing on their own terms, along the Northern Causeway Coast.

This man, Davy Govan, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, emigrated with his family in the 1960s to Los Angeles, California.

DAVY GOVAN: My family had moved to live in California.

My father was teaching in a school there.

We landed in New York and my father bought a Plymouth estate wagon and we headed across the country.

You know, and we were traveling down the West Coast, coming round past places like Malibu and Rincon, and seeing these surf spots.

♪ ♪ I just knew when I saw it that I had to, that I really had to do this here, you know?

DUGGAN: But, as an immigrant arriving in Los Angeles, Davy was kept on the outside.

GOVAN: One of the families that we knew there, one of the sons used to go to Malibu every weekend to surf.

But like I never got invited to go along, 'cause I would have been this uncool kid from Ireland, you know?

It was very hard to break into any of these high school subculture groups, really, you know?

Like footballers, then you got the car crowd, you know, like hot-rodders, and all that kind of stuff, you know.

And then the surfing crowd.

My group was the Mexicans, the Blacks, and the other European immigrants.

We weren't a surfing crowd, really, you know?

When you went to school there, they assumed you couldn't speak English.

But I did point out to them that English was my first language.

In fact, I spoke very little Irish.

(chuckles) I started surfing when we came back to Ireland.

I was about 14 when we got back.

My father was pretty handy with the woodwork and stuff like that, so we reckoned that we could make a surfboard-shaped thing by gluing pieces of plywood and stuff together.

Because there was no surfboards here, I mean, you couldn't have bought a surfboard here, so that was the only thing that we could think of to do, you know?

And then just going out on this thing.

It was like an aircraft carrier, this thing, anybody could have stood up on it.

There still wasn't very many people surfing up here at that time.

But when you'd seen the standard in California of what was good surf, you started to realize it's, you know, it's equally good here, if not possibly bigger and possibly more consistent.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: In the 1960s, Irish beaches were about as different as you could get from California.

♪ ♪ Instead of surfboards, hot rods, and bikinis, you were more likely to encounter donkeys and wool-clad beachcombers.

Visiting my Irish relatives felt like I was not only visiting another country, but also going back in time.

There were no major highways, and much of the economy still revolved around small family farms.

For the Belfast and Dublin crews, hitting the top breaks of Donegal and Clare could mean a four-hour drive on small country roads.

Despite these challenges, Davy Govan and the rest of the Belfast crew would create a vibrant surf scene along the North Causeway Coast.

GOVAN: I was sitting with my parents one Easter in the carpark at White Rocks Beach, and this car pulled in with three surfboards on the roof.

And these guys got out, I mean, I couldn't believe my eyes.

I mean, I just, I was like, "My God, there are other people here with surfboards."

That was Kevin Cavey and his friends.

We got chatting and I was saying, "Look, I've been surfing up here in this thing, you know, the last couple of years."

And they went, "Ah, yeah."

'Cause they were going round and checking out the coast.

They were doing one of their initial "surfaris," as they called them.

And so I kept in contact with him.

DUGGAN: After several years of surfing on his own, Davy would meet up with Bo Vance, a Belfast musician and recording engineer with an innovator's imagination.

Bo, along with brothers Peter and Martin Lloyd, co-founded Lloyd Sound Studio, a small recording facility they built from scratch, from the soundproof walls to the custom Lloyd amps.

VAN MORRISON: ♪ Could you ♪ ♪ A-would you ♪ DUGGAN: They would produce first recordings for local musicians, including an unknown group called Them, led by a powerful 17-year-old soulful singer named Van Morrison.

MORRISON: ♪ Or make me blue ♪ ♪ Could you love me ♪ DUGGAN: With high energy and a restless imagination, Bo would become a primary driver in the Irish surfing community, shaping homemade surfboards, making wetsuits, and developing wave prediction tools which were years ahead of mainstream commercial surfing.

BO VANCE: The surf interest started with this clever big brother of mine, right?

Who'd been holidaying in Donegal with a family, and he come home raving about these belly boards, as he called them, the body boards.

So I went down to Donegal and tried it and thought it was good fun.

Then of course we thought, "Should we not be able "to ride big boards on Irish waves?

But would a big board work?"

So we started to try and build boards.

And that, that's where the interest came and the addiction, because it is addiction.

Eventually Bo, who was a sort of a creative character, he made a board from scratch.

I think he got the plans for it out of a book in the library, I think.

I can't remember the name of the book.

DUGGAN: As the Belfast crew began to develop, Bo Vance, Davy Govan and Martin Lloyd would begin a ritual of weekend escapes up to Portrush, an hour's drive north of Belfast.

GOVAN: Martin and I and a few of the others had been coming up, and we never seen anybody else surfing up here.

And we were sitting there one day at East Strand in Portrush, just at the beach there, and the next thing around the corner came this guy in a pair of swimming trunks with a surfboard.

Martin thinks it was a homemade board he had at the time.

As I remember it, it was a commercial Bilbo that he had.

That was the first time we'd run into anybody outside our group, or certainly anybody from Portrush area surfing.

And of course Alan at that time, he didn't know about wetsuits either, so he was surfing without a wetsuit.

Alan used to surf up until Christmas without a wetsuit.

You know?

(laughs) DUGGAN: Could be pretty brisk.

GOVAN: Yeah, yeah.

ALAN DUKE: By trial and error, we learned how to shape surfboards and make them.

And to make our own wetsuits as well.

It was just neoprene without any lining to it, which meant it stretched a lot easier.

Somebody just lay on the floor, and we got a felt-tip pen and drew round them, basically.

Measured it, so as we knew one half should be that width and the next half should be that width, and we just stuck the seams together.

So we made our own wetsuits, and that made a hell of a difference.

MORAN: Alan Duke was very, very talented at surfing, and was making the tiniest of boards out of styrofoam.

There was one he called the Wellington because it was kind of scooped out on the deck.

It worked for him, it certainly wouldn't work for me, you know?

It was a very slow evolution, I suppose.

The boards improved, the wetsuits improved, and after that, we went exploring more or less all the way round Ireland.

GOVAN: At that stage we were still mostly surfing over sand and beaches.

The idea of surfing over rocky points and reefs and stuff like that, it hadn't happened yet.

You know, we sort of thought that was kind of too dangerous, but then whenever you started to do it, you realized it wasn't a big deal of difference, between getting hammered down on the hard sand and hammered down on the rocks, you know?

♪ ♪ Probably the best surfing spot in Ireland at the end of the day is the peak at Bundoran.

That's probably the best surf I've ever had in Ireland, I would say.

Good days at Bundoran reef, you know.

It's a beautiful wave breaking both right and left, and a distinct peak.

♪ ♪ Peaking up under good conditions, glassy or light off shore, pretty hard to beat.

(chuckles) Sometimes, when it's glassy, you can hardly tell what size it is until you actually take off on it.

Under those conditions, yeah, it's absolutely fantastic.

♪ ♪ The right-hand break at Easkey as well, too, it's a really good one.

I lost my front teeth on that there... (laughs) (laughing): Surfing in the dark on it, you know.

If the surf's that good, you know, you think, "All right, I'll just get one last set in," you know.

And I remember, like, it must have been about, probably was about six foot, you know, and should never have been out there really in the dark anyway, but it had become dark because we'd been out there for that long, you know.

And I kept saying I was going in, and...

I think maybe Kevin was out with me, and he said, "Oh no, no!

You'll really enjoy the next one," you know.

And like I remember taking off on this thing, And all is dark, but you might be aware of, like, white, there's some whiteness going on in your peripheral vision... (laughs) And you know what way the wave's going like that there but you know, you're flying along the end and then the whole thing comes down on you and... (imitates crashing) And you don't have any front teeth.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ DUGGAN: While Davy Govan and the Belfast crew continued to push the envelope of cold water surfing, Kevin Cavey and the Dublin crew were determined to put Ireland on the international surf map and host Ireland's first major surf competition.

CAVEY: We renamed it the Surf Club of Ireland because now we started to compete overseas and think of running championships of our own.

GOVAN: These surfing competition things were like, were more like social events.

They were just a good laugh.

Saturday night, everybody drank too much so everybody would have terrible hangovers.

On the Sunday, whenever the finals were on, and, you know, usually the person with the least worst hangover maybe would win or something like that.

It was very much just friendly get-togethers, just get-togethers, a gathering of people from all over Ireland with this common interest.

And it was just brilliant.

♪ ♪ MORAN: When Kevin Cavey decided to run the first Irish Surfing Championships, nobody had ever run a big contest, so they had no idea how it was run or anything like that.

STEADMAN: The idea of having an Irish surfing championship was undoubtedly Kevin's.

People like Harry and myself said, "Okay, so we're having a championship, so how do we organize this?"

We had absolutely no idea how you judged surfing, really, a little bit about what had been read.

But it was something that gathered its own momentum.

♪ ♪ And then, of course, people started to turn up.

You know, we got people coming over from England.

DUKE: Visiting surfers could compete also, because we had that international event, which was fun for them and they enjoyed the craic.

STEADMAN: They knew something about running championships, and knew how to do a bit of judging.

And we managed to sort of muddle through with running a championship.

But we really were the most na ïve surfers on the planet, probably at the time, to run one.

(chuckles) DUGGAN: As Kevin Cavey and the Irish Surfing Association began to compete abroad and further promote surfing throughout the island... (explosion crashing) (indistinct panicking, distant siren) ♪ ♪ Northern Ireland was beginning to be torn apart by the conflict known as The Troubles.

EVANS: The war was so sectarian.

It was Protestant against Catholic.

♪ ♪ It was the I.R.A.

against the U.V.F.

It was the unionists against the Sinn Féiners.

It was the British against the Irish.

REPORTER: Dawn over Belfast today showed a grim scene.

Buildings scarred by fire, thousands of pounds' worth of damage caused, and, of course, the tragic loss of life.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: The Troubles conflict stems from a very long history of English conquest of Ireland.

After many failed rebellions by the Irish people, the rebellion of 1921 would lead to the formation of the Republic of Ireland.

But the imperfect treaty of 1921 would divide the island between Northern Ireland, under English control, and the Republic of Ireland.

In the late 1960s, the Catholic community in Northern Ireland would be inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States as they advocated for equal rights in labor, education, and housing.

On October 5, 1968, during a peaceful civil rights protest in Derry, Northern Ireland, the R.U.C.

police force, attempting to stop the march, would violently attack protesters.

(crowd panicking) (yelling): The government says "God save us all."

(groans) DUGGAN: After October 5, the conflict would turn more and more violent and spark the beginning of the Troubles and the reemergence of the I.R.A.

and their campaign to overthrow Britain's occupation of Northern Ireland.

♪ ♪ (explosion roaring) GOVAN: Obviously, when the violence campaign started up then, it really was horrendous.

No-warning bombs in the center of Belfast.

I came down through this set of steps, went 'round a corner, like a block around the corner, I'm heading back to go, and I heard this bomb going off.

And the bomb went off in the building that I'd just been in.

So I walk back round the corner.

I mean, you know, after a bomb's gone off, all there's, like, dust, and curtains hanging out, blowing out of windows.

You know, and... glass.

Inevitably, people have been injured, you know.

And the next thing, like, the ambulances start to arrive, and I started to realize that that bomb was actually in that building that I had just come out of, you know.

You start to think, "Well, that's-- that's a near one," you know?

BRITTON: When you have a surfboard on top of the car, the British army would be, "What the hell is that?"

And they would be bringing you in to check that there wasn't something in those surfboards that was a...

I don't know, a rocket or whatever.

(laughs) But you just got used to it, I mean, that was just the way.

And you learned, when you were driving from A to B, you just learned the areas not to go into.

LLOYD: I drove through Crummock Square one night, and I had an old van, you know.

And at that stage, it was quite common to be stopped, "Out your car," and they'd burn your car for you, you know.

But I didn't stop this time.

There was a couple of, you know, yobbos, or three or four maybe, in front of the van, stopping it, you know, stopping it.

I just edged on away through them, you know.

Drove up the road and a brick came through the back window of the van.

So that's quite close enough.

You had obviously the customs, but it was mostly the British army security.

You drive, there'd be like, random checks, right, so you'd be there and then you'd be diverted off into a shed and that was it.

Like, you know, it's like, "Everything out of the vehicle," you know.

That kind of stuff.

DUKE: The borders area, just when you came across it, you were aware that there was probably cameras and spotters, two or three miles, you know, before you actually got to the border, they were actually... they had your number plate, they had probably information on you already before you've even put your handbrake on.

So you learned to say nothing.

You just kept it to... kept your head down.

(indistinct chatter) ♪ ♪ (distant bomb bursting, crowd yelling) ♪ ♪ (flames roaring) ♪ ♪ (weapon firing) ♪ ♪ (waves crashing) GOVAN: If they could have stopped the waves, you know, they would have.

But they couldn't stop the waves, so they couldn't stop the surfing.

(chuckles) The surfers in Ireland then, they didn't put up with any of this nonsense about north and south, Catholic and Protestant, we were all just surfers.

That's the bottom line, that's who we were, and nobody was gonna draw any distinctions on anything else.

The only distinction was... that was drawn was in the water and how well you surfed.

That was... determined, kind of, your identity, who you were.

There was never any differentiation of what religion you were or creed or whatever.

We were always...

I suppose we were just ready to include everybody, that's it, inclusive-like.

And I suppose then, with the surfing and everything, we were all... you know, nobody even-- I mean, religion never came up.

Nobody really practiced their religion anyway.

(laughs) No, I don't think there was any sectarianism in surfing at all, no, no.

You know, Willie and Barry and so on, and Ross, they're... we're all just, we're all just human beings.

We're surfers, you know, there's no question of whether-- what religion you are in surfing.

♪ ♪ GOVAN: Soon as you got across the border, you had this sort of sense of freedom, like...

The world was your oyster.

You could drive off 60 miles down to County Mayo and not get stopped, or anything like that, once you got away from this whole security stuff.

It was a big part of life then, it was quite an oppressive kind of part of life, really.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: In the 1970s, there was a growing divide between those surfers who were determined to promote and commercialize surfing, and those surfers who were determined to preserve their secret surfing paradise.

CAVEY: I wanted the world to know that Ireland was a surfing nation.

We weren't just this island forgotten in the Atlantic, and that we actually had waves as good as anybody else.

So it was a totally patriotic flash in my mind.

VANCE: The fellas in the north, not only did they not want to be getting involved in surf competitions, they were disinclined, if they found a new beach, to tell everybody about it.

Now, I can see the point, that they were afraid that they were gonna crowd all the beaches with people.

But they took it too far.

Davy Govan, in particular, would've been very cross if I'd said, "I found a new beach in Donegal, and I'm gonna tell Kevin about it."

He would've used a few strong words.

DUGGAN: The conflict would even divide families.

The Britton brothers, who helped pioneer Irish surfing in Donegal, would be deeply divided for almost three decades over the issue of promotion and commercialization of surfing in Ireland.

BRIAN BRITTON: At that time, there became a split in Irish surfing.

You had the black wetsuit brigade, who just wanted no publicity, no competitions.

My brother Barry and my brother Willie were on that side.

They wanted things to be kept quiet.

My brother, Conor, and I tended to be more the organizers, you know, "We've got to take this sport forward."

Any media coverage at all, all of a sudden there was an influx.

If they saw pictures of really good waves, all of a sudden then you'd have Australians, you've French, you've English, a lot of Welsh and stuff used to come over.

And they started to take over the breaks a bit because there wasn't that many Irish surfers still.

But there was a lot more of them when they arrived over, and they would just take over the waves and they were sort of... so people got a bit pissed off.

The idea was surfing is best kept to a small community.

"These are our waves, this is my beach, piss off."

You know?

Now that's not nice.

A lot of opposition was aimed at the crowd in the south, not because they were from the Irish Republic or because some of them were Catholics, just... this trend.

Now, Kevin Cavey favors competitions.

I don't.

I don't wanna compete in the surf.

BRIAN BRITTON: Back in the late '60s, the one thing we always wanted to do was have a major international surfing competition in Ireland.

You had a EuroSurf in Jersey in 1969 and 1970.

And then you had a EuroSurf in France in '71.

And we had an Irish team at those competitions.

And it just became natural that a EuroSurf would come to Ireland.

We used to debate with the people who would be organizing the competitions.

"You sure this is a really good idea to have the world championships at Bundoran?"

We can go down and surf in Bundoran here, and there's gonna be three or four or five or six of us or eight of us out on the waves.

And really, it's after this international surfing competition that the exposure's gonna get... it's just gonna be really crowded.

DUGGAN: As the conflict between the Black Wetsuit Brigade and those surfers seeking to promote and host international competitions grew... (bomb bursting, indistinct yelling) ...the Troubles conflict continued to worsen, with 1972 being the most violent year.

International sporting events would be canceled, and teams would refuse to travel to Ireland due to the escalating conflict.

(crowd rioting) REPORTER: The fighting raged into the early dusk.

Demonstrators captured and burned five single-deck police buses, and pushed another into a canal.

The police watched silently and did not intervene.

♪ ♪ BRIAN BRITTON: You know, politics and surfing never mixed.

So when the rugby teams, for example, didn't come over to play, we put our hand up, sure.

We said, you know, "We've got the waves in Lahinch, "we've got the support of local businesses.

We're well capable of running a European championship."

EVANS: Surfers came from all over the world, all over the world, to participate in the European Surfing Championships to take place in Lahinch.

For many it was the first time ever here.

They didn't even know that there were such fabulous waves in Ireland.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL O'KENNEDY: This event is particularly significant in that these European Surfing Championships will enable you to attract new members to your coaching forces and will ensure that we will have a higher level of participation in all our recreational activities, thereby ensuring that we will be a healthier, a fitter, and a happier people.

And accordingly, I declare the European Surfing Championships officially open.

Thank you very much.

(applause) I was over here two years ago and I know how great, you know, Irish people really are, and I just had to tell the English surfers to forget all the political sort of things, and just come and have a great time.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Against all odds, Kevin Cavey and the organizers had achieved their dream of hosting a major international surf competition.

HARRY EVANS: It's terrific because, first of all, we're a very young surfing nation, but I think mainly because of our participation and our support of the European championships over the past number of years that we've got the honor this year... EVANS: The weekend was planned to a T. My father was a brilliant organizer and his years of working for Multinational certainly highlighted themselves in his abilities.

But as Saturday rolled around, a huge fear was developing because the water was flat.

It was like glass.

We kept assuming that the trade winds from the northwest would eventually come down, and what actually ensued was a catastrophic weekend of a completely flat ocean.

DUGGAN: With no other major international sporting events in Ireland at the time, Irish Public Television was there to cover the event, and captured Kevin Cavey and Harry Evans scrambling to come up with a plan B to find ridable surf and salvage EuroSurf '72.

EVANS: With all of these teams ready to compete from all over the world and no waves, I mean, we traveled north to Doolin, we searched in vain for waves.

Well, to move the organization and administration from here would present Brian with a... REPORTER: For the organizing committee, if conditions on the chosen beaches of Lahinch proved unsatisfactory, then the venue would have to be changed overnight.

That meant reorganizing transport, car parks, loudspeaker systems, feeding.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: After searching in vain and not finding better waves up the coast, the competition proceeded in Lahinch.

The surfers paddled out and made the best of the subpar conditions.

♪ ♪ At the conclusion of day one, England was in first place, France second, and Wales was in third place.

And everyone was hoping for better conditions the next day.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ REPORTER: However, early morning brought a terrible stillness in the air.

And this mile-long beach, where the mighty Atlantic breakers normally roll, had little more than ripples on the shore.

This was a great disappointment for the organizing committee, but all the participants agreed that the team result would be judged on the performances during the previous day's heats.

This resulted in England being declared European Surfing Champions for 1972, with Wales second and France third.

DUGGAN: Despite the success of holding a major international sporting event during the height of the Troubles conflict, EuroSurf 1972 came to a disappointing conclusion.

The hoped-for opportunity to showcase Ireland's world class surf never arrived in Lahinch.

♪ ♪ On Monday morning, after a night of many pints, European competitors were preparing to catch flights back home when word began to spread that an epic swell and offshore winds had arrived, delivering perfect waves to Spanish Point, a reef break a few miles south of Lahinch, that had never been surfed.

♪ ♪ European competitors bound for Shannon Airport instead detoured to Spanish Point for a perfect session.

They would surf for hours, with several deciding to skip their flights home and instead begin a surfing safari of the world-class waves up the west coast.

That morning would change everything and Spanish Point would become known as one of the finest reef breaks in all of Europe.

It would also mark the beginning of the end of Ireland's secret surfing paradise.

♪ ♪ NAUGHTON: The known surf world when I was in high school probably consisted of half a dozen areas-- Australia, Hawaii, you know, the United... U.S., South Africa, France, you know, England.

Beyond that, you know, it was like the vast unknown.

Reading the surf magazines, the articles that always caught my interest were the travel articles.

So I said, "That's what I wanna do once I get old enough."

I had a lot of stops and starts on my way through the university system because of all the travels I was doing.

I did end up getting a degree in English lit, and then I had an interest in Irish, Anglo-Irish literature.

I thought, "Well, Trinity's a place to... learn about these guys."

So I applied to Trinity in Dublin and then got accepted.

So I took them up on the offer.

That's how I got kind of introduced to the Irish surf community.

Back then, once you met one or two of the Irish surfers, you were introduced into the whole surfing community, which was very small.

You know, everyone could sit in one room together.

The guys who surfed all year round in Ireland could all easily fit in one room, and have room for others, too, you know.

So you got to know everybody on a first name basis.

♪ ♪ I can't describe how special it is to have lived through that time and that era which will never come again.

And how many days I showed up at Bundoran, which is, in my mind, you know, it was a wave as good as any wave I'd surfed anywhere in the world.

I just always assumed it was gonna be empty, no one was gonna be there.

And if there was somebody there, I was gonna know who they were, and we were gonna share waves together.

♪ ♪ EVANS: In the late '60s, the coast of Ireland felt like it had been untouched since the time of the famine.

Nobody else there, but surrounded by the most extraordinarily beautiful golden beaches and waves such, you'd die for.

LLOYD: And you can look 'round with 360 degrees and you won't see a single sign of civilization.

Absolute sheer morning glass, you know, and the sun just coming up over Yeats country.

It was just religious, you know, a religious experience.

DUGGAN: The Belfast crew would gradually move to the North Causeway Coast to seek waves and escape the turbulence of the Troubles.

They would continue their rejection of commercialization of surfing and protest the growing promotion of international surf contests.

♪ ♪ In the years following EuroSurf 1972, Ireland's small, tightly knit surf community would gradually splinter apart.

Kevin Cavey's life was beginning to unravel on land, and the Troubles conflict reached Bray, Ireland.

Sheffield United Tours, the top customer of the Royal Starlight Hotel, would have a bus firebombed by the IRA after leaving the hotel.

ANN CAVEY: The tour bus that left Bray and went down to Killarney was burnt out.

Overnight, everything was canceled.

That was it, you know?

Everything went.

All the business from the north of Ireland went as well.

EVANS: Tourism crumbled.

The hotel business started to suffer terribly.

And I and Dad witnessed the sudden demise of the Royal Starlight Hotel, the hotel business, the Cavey family, and they were left with actually no choice but to adopt that age-old Irish parable of the immigrant, to leave and to go to, of all places, Calgary in Canada.

A landlocked community, no access to the ocean.

It was one of the most crushing blows in my life, certainly, to see him leave.

And also for the Irish Surfing Association.

It was a very heartbreaking moment.

DUGGAN: After declaring bankruptcy and losing the Royal Starlight Hotel to creditors, Kevin Cavey, the boy from Bray who had spent ten years evangelizing and spreading the gospel of surfing, would sell all his surfboards and leave Ireland.

(breeze blowing, waves crashing) After emigrating to Canada, Kevin would eventually return to Ireland, and for over 35 years, has continued his ritual of chasing waves at every opportunity.

So it wasn't surprising when I received a phone call from Kevin telling me there was swell headed to the west coast of Ireland.

He suggested we blow off our sit-down interview in Dublin and instead head west, to hit the waves at Aughris.

Here we are, Aughris Beach.

Beautiful Saturday.

Ah, it's great to be back, yeah, to the old northwest corner.

Yep, this would've been one of the first places we came when we moved west to try and find a wave for everybody.

♪ ♪ DUGGAN: Aughris is a break in county Sligo, located a few miles south of Strandhill, where my grandparents had emigrated from in the 1920s.

SURFER: Hi, Kevin.

- Hi, how're you?

- We'll see you out there.

- Yeah.

DUGGAN: The place where, 50 years earlier, Kevin and Roger Steadman had set off on their journey together to bring surfing to Ireland.

CAVEY: Over 50 years since I first came here.

FRIGHTENED RABBIT: ♪ I swim ♪ ♪ Oh swim ♪ (singer vocalizing) ♪ Dip a toe in the ocean ♪ ♪ Oh how it hardens ♪ ♪ And it numbs... ♪ CAVEY: Now, there's a lot of discussion about the correct way to wax a board.

And...

I'm sure they're all correct.

I just put it on any way.

And I usually put on too much.

FRIGHTENED RABBIT: ♪ Oh swim ♪ ♪ Until you can't see land ♪ ♪ Swim ♪ ♪ Until you can't see land ♪ ♪ Swim ♪ ♪ Until you can't see land ♪ ♪ Are you a man ♪ ♪ Are you a bag of sand ♪ ♪ Swim until you can't see land ♪ ♪ Swim until you can't see land ♪ ♪ Swim until you can't see land ♪ ♪ Are you a man ♪ ♪ Are you a bag of sand ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The sea has seen my like before ♪ ♪ Though it's my first and perhaps last time ♪ ♪ Let's call me a baptist, call this a drowning of the past ♪ ♪ She is there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back ♪ ♪ ♪