Pulling Blood From A Stone

Sensing they needed help, and being a natural hero, I stripped down to my frillies and provided some assistance. I’m not sure my heroic attempts at helping were of any use. Well, I know they weren’t. Whilst I was there, the ski was flicked into the path of a huge wave and disappeared from view. It would be found by the Portuguese Navy three days later.

In the decade since I’ve interviewed Cotty from a jetski in the Nazare channel during the tow-challenge events, shared a Michelin-starred meal in a Biarritz palace (paid for by a luxury Swiss watch brand), talked turkey over six cans of Stellar Artois for a defunct Youtube channel in a London warehouse  (Q: when are you going to start riding waves that break?) and generally found his mix of deprecating humour and pure commitment always a joy to be around. Even if the feeling isn't mutual.  

In that time, while my career has been stuck,  metaphorically and sometimes literally, in the Nazare shorebreak, Cotty has gone from a plumber to one of the most recognisable big-wave surfers on the planet. 

If it wasn’t for Cotton’s passion, single-mindedness, talent, and sacrifices, two of big-wave surfing's most crucial destinations may still be surfing outposts. People have largely forgotten his pioneering XL waves in Ireland at Mully in the early 2000s. His surfing at Nazare is more well-known. Has has been nominated for numerous XXL Big Wave Awards and more recently has provided the humour, common sense and ego-less passion that has been a crucial factor in HBO's 100 Foot Wave success. 

That’s probably why he has his own signature Cotty boot, and I have, well, traveled to the outskirts of Edinburgh to talk to him about his signature boot. It’s made by Xtratuf, and is a riff on their Wheelhouse boot - the more robust, commercial-grade version of the Ankle Deck boot first worn by Alaskan fishermen more than 75 years ago. 

Strangely, for an early May morning in Edinburgh, the all-weather boot wasn’t required. A strong sun was bathing the former granite quarry, and the world’s most northerly wave pool, in a gorgeous, dappled, summer-like light and heat. The quarry provides a natural amphitheatre and is the biggest of any Wavegarden-powered site in the world. If we were to measure it in UK terms, it's three times the size of the Wembley football pitch. 

Cotty had asked key members of the remarkably strong Scottish surf scene to join in some of the sessions. Unsurprisingly for a talented goofyfooter whose front lounge room looks into the throat of Thurso, Scotland’s world-class righthander, Mark Boyd’s backhand vertical to pigdog to rotor was on point. Cotty-protege and big wave charger Ben Largs, from the Outer Hebrides, focused on airs. Newcastle’s Sally McGee spread some OG style over proceedings. 

Lost Shore Founder Andy Hadden, a former chartered surveyor turned property developer and Scottish surfer, was also in the water. Long ago, he’d identified Edinburgh’s lack of accommodation and leisure and activity options. By building 53 luxury accommodation units made up of Hilltop Lodges and Waterfront Pods along with a skate centre, treatment rooms,  cafe and restaurant, he had pulled the 60 million quid together needed to pull blood from the stone. 

“This might have worked without surfing, and many thought we were crackers to add it, but we wanted to have a transformative effect on Scottish surfing,” Hadden told me after an hour session. “It can be an introduction to the sport and a vital training tool. Mainly, we wanted to tap into the incredible stoke and community that Scottish surfers usually have to work so hard to get. Without that, it’s just a heartless property deal.” 

Now, inland wave operators tend to be zealots when it comes to selling their wares. That started with the 19th-century Bavarian King “Mad” Ludwig II, who electrified one of his private lakes in Neuschwanstein Castle to create artificial waves. 

And I’m still not sure what surf culture, if any, will form in these petri dishes. Mike Warshaw isn’t sure either. “Our Ahab obsession with good empty surf has up to this point been necessary, mandatory, defining. Now it will be optional,” said the eminent surf historian. “We’ve always been seekers—greedy and indulgent as a rule, yes, often frustrated, bitter at times, but seekers nonetheless. We’re about to become gymnasts. Wavepools make surfing 75% less interesting. People, have we not turned our unicorn into a donkey?”

I get his point that some of surfing’s primitive and intertwined base notes like travel, adventure, line-up etiquette and localism have been neutered. Yet for Callum, a 50-year-old IT specialist, originally from Torquay, his new local and its guaranteed fix have saved his surfing life and got him back on the program. Nathalia, who with her Scottish surfer husband splits her time between Brazil and Edinburgh, surfs here twice a week. “Better than yoga, and my seven-year-old has just gotten the bug too. I can’t explain the difference it has made to our family.”

She’d come to hear Cotty talk, and hopefully, grab a free pair of the his signature Xtratufs, and managed both. “Surfing, in all its forms, just keeps on delivering,” Cotty told me. “I love seeing the young men and women surfing now in Nazaré and Ireland. They don’t have to travel to Hawaii to follow their passion as I did. Now here in Scotland, local surfers can get their fill, while groms will discover the thrill,” he said before concluding. 

“And Mondy, next time we warm up, can you wear more than just your underpants.”