How Scottish Surfing survived a near-death experience to hit 50

​Accommodation will be hard to come by in Thurso on the weekend of 19 and 20 April, as surfers and surf fans from all over Scotland descend on the town for the annual Scottish National Surfing Championships. It’s an event with a long and colourful history stretching all the way back to the 1970s, and the past winners are now immortalised in a ​roll of honour on the slick new website of Scottish Surfing – the governing body of the sport in Scotland, known until recently as the Scottish Surfing Federation, which organises the Nationals and which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. 

To scan these lists is to see the ebb and flow of regional rivalries play out ​over the decades: the early successes of Edinburgh Surf Club, between 1973 and 1976; the emergence of Fraserburgh's Broch Surf Club as a force to be reckoned with in 1977; and the dominance, in more recent times, of the North Shore Surf Club, and in particular current champions Phoebe Strachan and Craig McLachlan.

Craig "Suds" Sutherland competes at the Scottish National Surfing Championships in 2024 | Oscar James

Anyone reading these lists will also notice something strange: between 2000 and 2004 there are no winners listed for either the men’s or women’s divisions. So, at a time when the global surf industry was rocketing towards its commercial zenith, what was going on with surfing in Scotland?

In their book Surfing Scotland: Sixty Years of Surfing in the Cold Water Kingdom, pioneering waveriders Andy Bennetts and Malcolm Findlay explain how the SSF first came into being back in 1975, with Bill Batten as its first president, Bennetts as secretary and Ian Wishart as treasurer. “There were representatives from the South-East, North-East, North Coast and South-West,” they write, and in the early years the ​SSF’s Annual General Meeting was “often a laid-back and rather boozy affair with considerable heckling and hilarity.”

Scottish surfing pioneers Bill Batten, Ian Wishart and Andy Bennetts | MBP Productions

Towards the end of the millennium, however, the SSF was in trouble – there was no dramatic implosion, but rather a gradual running out of steam. “Through the late 1990s,” write​ Bennetts and Findlay, “Federation membership declined as it became increasingly perceived to be worthwhile only for those with the prospect of making the national team. Fewer members meant reduced income, which in turn meant less money to spend on teams and events, a spiral of decline that, by 1999 led the Federation to slip quietly into a state of abeyance.”

So, from 2000 to 2004, no SSF meant no National Surfing Championships, but then, out of the blue, ​the organisation was jolted back to life. To the surprise of many of those who had previously been involved in the ​S​SF, in the summer of 2005 the P&J reported that “Banff-based Scottish Surf and Watersports Club has successfully bid for the [Scottish National Surfing] Championships and is putting the final touches to a programme of onshore entertainment.”

William Watson is now the chair of Scottish Surfing, and he has served the organisation in various different capacities over the years, including as president. He recalls the shock of discovering, not only that the Nationals were apparently back on, but that they were being held in one of the most surf-starved months of the year. “I was in my mid-20s,” he remembers, “and suddenly I got a message saying, in the middle of August, there’s going to be a Scottish Surfing Championships and it’s going to be held in Banff. I said ‘Ach, what’s going on here?’ I thought ‘Has anyone consulted the wider community?’”

William Watson at Thurso East | Roger Cox / The Scotsman

“At this time I was quite well-connected with a lot of guys I’d met in the surf from across Scotland, so eventually I reached out and said ‘Look, we need to gather the community together, gather the clans, and have a conversation about the SSF and what we want to do with it, because if you actually look what’s happened, it’s just been left in limbo – it either needs to be shut down properly, or we need to put some proper structures in place so we can hold proper Scottish Championships and move the whole thing forward.”

Watson did indeed gather the clans, and a contest called the Gathering of the Clans was duly held that autumn. “We had a discussion off the back of that,” he says, ‘and went ‘Right, let’s get the Federation going again.’” The new-look SSF saw Chris Noble elected as president, supported by Watson and Damon Hewlett, and they decided to focus on two annual competitions: the Scottish National Surfing Championships, to be held every spring, and then a more informal team event, the Gathering of the Clans, to be held every autumn.

​So, not only does the SSF celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, ​but this autumn will also see the 20th anniversary of the Clans – the event which effectively saved it. It's clear, too, that ​Scottish Surfing has learned the lessons of the past. Yes, it still runs contests and offers “pathways to competitive events and elite performance”, but these days it’s also big on water safety, education and environmental protection, broadening its focus to encompass the wide range of elements that make up surfing in Scotland. 

For more on Scottish Surfing and this year’s Scottish National Surfing Championships, which run from 18-20 April, and to watch a livestream of the event, see www.scottishsurfing.scot