All aboard Ireland's first surfer rides again
Joe Roddy surfs in Tramore, Co Waterford, yesterday, 60 years after he first took up the sport in 1949 with a board made from old tea chests
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Monday June 22 2009
IT may now be the height of fashion to have a surfboard strapped to the roof of a car but 60 years ago it was a rare sight indeed.
Yesterday, Ireland's first surfer, Joe Roddy, told how he took to the waves in 1949 armed with a 12-foot board made from old tea chests.
It was a sight that left people "gobsmacked", he chuckled.
In 1949, the then teenager caused people to stop and stare as he paddled out to sea off the Dundalk coast on his homemade board.
"It was an incredible sight. One time I came in around two miles and there was a line of people along the beach just gobsmacked," he said. "Most must have thought it was Christ back on the water again."
Mr Roddy, who runs Skellig Boat Trips in Co Kerry with his son, yesterday took to a replica of his first board in Tramore, Co Waterford, to mark the 60th anniversary of his first surf off the coast.
According to Martin Cullinane, of the T-Bay Surf and Eco centre at Tramore, Mr Roddy, now in his late 70s, had been surfing around two decades before the sport took off in Ireland.
The grandfather, who was born in Roches Point lighthouse, yesterday took to the sea at Tramore accompanied by up to 50 pupils of the surf school. He said it was his first time surfing in around 57 years.
The innovative teen also made his own flippers from aluminium pipe, and a pair of goggles from a WWII gas mask, with a garden hose for a snorkel. He can't remember what led him to make the surfboard but believes he must have spotted a photograph of a Hawaiian surfer.
Now, Mr Roddy said there were 50,000 surfers in the country and there are body boards for sale in all beach shops.
- Louise Hogan
