I had done a lot of hill walking and flying but the sea was the final frontier.
I went to Portugal on holiday in the mid-1990s and saw guys surfing; I was just blown away by how audacious it was and how daring it looked. To have that kind of understanding with the sea, that planted the seed.
It was 10 years later when I was on holiday in the Canary Islands that I had the opportunity to take a surfing course and found it much harder than I thought but it niggled away at me. It frustrated me that I was scared of the sea but it was constantly bubbling away in the background: I had to do it.
My wife Shona and son David bought me a surfboard for Christmas and that's what finally got me in the water. I surf at the Bay of Skaill in Orkney. In an ideal scenario I'd be out once a week. It's mostly autumn to spring, the summer tends to be pretty flat. Generally it's a winter sport which always surprises people when you tell them you're out there in the winter. That's when the best waves are. Scotland has stacks of good waves and people are waking up to that. Surfing in Scotland is going through a boom period.
For the first few years, particularly when I was on my own, fear was holding me back. It felt it was related to my own loss as a child: my dad died when I was seven. Then becoming a father myself, I suddenly started to have all these concerns about what would happen if I died and left my son and my wife.
There was a really strong desire to get out there and do it but at the same time I was being held back by the fear of what would happen if I drowned. I wasn't a terribly great swimmer but the fear factor was something I had to address and recognise that it's healthy to be cautious but at the same time you have to face these things down and take a look at why you feel that way.
I'm still a pretty average surfer. A lot of people would cite riding a huge wave as a highlight but for me it's the days where I can get to my feet and those few seconds of real euphoria that comes from riding a wave. That's the great thing about surfing, once you're out there in the ocean your head is completely clear of work and the usual day to day hassles, you don't think of anything else, just what's in the moment.
It's that sense of being out among nature, it's a completely raw, elemental experience particularly on a wild day. You get that sense that you're out in an uncontrollable environment. To some degree you're master of your own fate. There's a sense of freedom, and a slight element of risk as well. It is a bit of a cliché, surfers will often say only a surfer knows the feeling but there's a degree of truth in that. It's very hard to describe what it's like to stand up and ride a wave. It's really like nothing else, a complete sense of euphoria and your perspective on the world does change when you're riding a surfboard.
The power of the ocean is a big factor. You're riding a pulse of energy which has travelled thousands of miles from the other side of the planet and you're tapping into that when it is reaching this side of the world.
Board by David C Flanagan is published by Fledgling Press, priced £11.99.
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