Sea Fever: An Irish Surf Odyssey

Sea Fever is a surf film with heart. From the very opening scene - a close up of foaming white water, tumbling over sand as it hisses its way back into the next wave – the film captures the essence of surfing that in many other parts of the world has been lost in the tumultuous commercial growth of the last few decades.

Sea Fever is a surf film that goes beyond what happens in the water, it explains the lifestyle that Irish surfers live, using interesting interviews with some of the most important surfers who inhabit those shores. The one thing that stands out with all the local surfers that are interviewed is that while they are talking in a very open and honest matter - they are all smiling. None of them are talking about what surfing means to them in a matter of fact way; its is all from the heart with a clear passion that is evident and can be understood by anyone who has themselves slid down the face of a breaking wave.

The film follows a meandering course via Bundoran, Kerry and Lahinch, through the 60’s to the last few years and culminates in this winter’s epic tow in surfing under the Cliffs of Mohir. The footage is well shot and edited and really captures what it is like to surf in the Emerald Isle. The water is shown clear and glasslike but with a grey-green tint that you will not find in Australian surf films. The footage of the shore is all of lush green farmland and imposing limestone cliffs, rather than sand dunes and cane fields, which gives the footage a much more raw and European feel.

The surfing highlight is obviously this winter’s big wave tow in surfing at Aileen’s. It starts with one wave, where it appears that the very floor of the Ocean has lifted up en masse to create a heaving wall of exploding water. Dan Joel and Sam Lamiroy’s commentary provides a wonderful insiders view of tow in surfing and explains what the extreme end of Irish surfing feels like. Watching this footage, of numerous surfers riding 45ft walls of water in towards a sheer limestone cliff, a mile from any exit point, makes compelling viewing.

The film flicks away from Ireland for a short while, moving back to the Cornish village of Porthleven, which provides an interesting contrast with the English surf scene. Sea Fever shows that Ireland has an enormous amount of coastline, lots of it unexplored, where it is still possible to head out into a 5ft swell and find there isn’t a crowd or any attitude. It shows that there is a certain spirit alive in Irish surfing, where surfers have that spirituality, closeness to nature and a complete lack of materialism or ego, leaving just a burning passion for surfing and a love of the Ocean.

Watching Sea Fever will leave you with that same stoked refreshed feeling as an early morning session, on a cool deserted beach as the sun comes up. It is a great surf film, which creates an impression of Ireland as being an outpost on the border of a great wilderness, the last great untamed surfing frontier, full of wild characters with a glint in their eye and broad grins on their faces. And watching this film you aren’t quite sure if its because their eyes are the window to their soul or its because of a secret Irish reef break they are just about to surf.

 Visit Sea Fever here