Surfing Solo – Sri Lanka 1974

Back when there were huts instead of hotels, people wrote letters instead of Whatsapp’s, Buddhism wasn’t a buzz-word, and surfing a world class wave (naked) was a solitary act… St. Francis local, Marc Maingard, lived the 1970s Sri Lanka surf dream. Here he tells us how he remembers today’s global surf mecca as his entry into the Write To Surf Contest presented by Billabong. (If you read our Sri Lanka feature story titled ‘Swipe Right’ in the last Zag issue 41.4 – you’ll see how quickly things have changed…) Written By Marc Maingard *** In 1974, at age 23, I found myself in an ashram in South India. It’s a long story but prior to arriving, I looked at the map and thought – there have to be waves there. So before I left Durban for India I had Spider make me a sweet 6’6” pintail. This is where the story really begins… When I first surfed in Pondicherry, India, the whole village – up to 1000 people – would come and watch in total silence. It was the seventies and fibreglass and surfboards were still completely alien to rural South India. You can imagine, their boats were squares of wood […]