Up until a few years ago surfing in Bermuda was a well-kept secret, the rare spots where you could catch a wave shared only amongst a handful of people who understood the tides and the weather and the complex ways in which the two combine to create the perfect swell. Surfers were a rare sight, seen only in the most treacherous waters as significant storms approached. These days surfers dot the horizon, particularly at Horseshoe Bay, where whole families can often be found surfing together.
“When I was a kid, nobody surfed Horseshoe,” says Cullen O’Hara, founder of Isolated Surfboards, which hosts an annual surf competition at the beach. He explains how surf conditions have changed dramatically over the past two decades as the impact of climate change quite literally reshapes our beaches. “I learned how to surf in Bermuda, but I surfed on the reef breaks, which don’t change. I think I surfed at Horseshoe Bay maybe four or five times in the course of ten years until I was about 20 years old—post Fabian (one of the strongest hurricanes on record to have hit Bermuda which devasted the island in September 2003).
“Fabian was the catalyst that started this.” O’Hara, who used to work at the Bermuda Weather Service, explains how more powerful and more recurrent storms also mean more frequent surfable conditions. “If you look at the historical archives since they began in the late 1800s, there has maybe been a handful of years where you have had two direct hits. Now, in the last fifteen years we’ve had several of these scenarios, which has been really unusual.” In contrast, Berry Bridges, one of the first people to take up surfing in Bermuda in the late 1960s, remembers there being lapses of up to three or four years between storms.
Although in hindsight the 1960s are seen as the heyday of surfing, when the Beach Boys released Surfin’ Safari in 1962 the sport, which was booming in California, had yet to hit the mainstream and was unheard of in Bermuda. Bridges, who founded the little-known Hungry Bay Surf Club in 1967, was one of a handful of people to take it up it locally. “A lot of people didn’t know what surfing was on this island even in the 1980s,” says O’Hara.
Like much of our culture, the history of surfing in Bermuda has been passed down as oral history—stories shared from one generation to the next, folklore peppered amongst forgotten details. “As far as I understand it, Berry Bridges and his friends used to surf the waves at Hungry Bay in small row boats,” says Sebastian Dill, a freedive and surfing instructor. “Then these two Texans came down with their boards and the locals realised that the waves there were surfable.”
“I’ve heard the story from a few of the old timers,” Cullen O’ Hara adds, “and my understanding is that it was two guys that came down from the states and were stationed here during the war who had boards. They were fraternising with some locals and when they end up having to leave, they leave their boards. Their boards remain in the central parishes and that’s where they ended up surfing.” Bridges’s nephew Ian Bridges (like many Bermudians known most simply by his nickname, “Cheese”) is the founder of Bermuda Adventure and Surf and the island’s leading surf instructor. “What I tried to remind my uncle when I spoke to him recently,” Ian says, “is that’s he’s a huge part of the structure of what surfing was. He picked it up very early and his lifestyle played a pivotal part in what surfing was in Bermuda.”
“Berry was born and raised in Hungry Bay in the 1940s. They were water people. They fished. They water-skied. Before surfboards were in Bermuda, they were building boogie boards out of plywood. Some people were standing on them. They were building punts to catch the waves at the reef and wherever they could. Hungry Bay mainly.”
What would go on to become the Hungry Bay Surf Club began in the mid-1960s. “In 1965 they built the main hut,” says Ian, describing it as a house on stilts that rose amongst the trees and included three bunk beds, a ping pong table and a large dock. “It didn’t become the Hungry Bay Surf Club until 1967 or ’68 when the people who started surfing Hungry Bay— Berry Bridges, Michael Flemming, Scott Hooper, Terry Mullen, Robert Chandler, Doug Shirley, Charles Peniston and Bill Nash—had their boards in the hut. They were hanging in the ceiling with the names of the rider ahead of the board.”
“The history has always been here but it’s been underground, and hidden, and you’ve had to want it,” says Kelly de Roulet, who together with her husband, professional surf photographer Seth de Roulet, relocated to Bermuda from California in 2020. The two of them are at the heart of a renewed local surf scene, which has seen Horeshoe Bay become the epicentre of a growing community in recent years.
Despite spending two decades immersed in the heart of the pro surfing world (Seth was a staff photographer for Surfing magazine and would travel the globe shooting in waves as high as 50 foot), it wasn’t until the family relocated to Bermuda that Kelly took up surfing.
“Moving here, it’s so much more user-friendly. The water is clear and warm, and Horseshoe is so accessible. It’s a good place to learn to surf but also to learn the etiquette.”
Etiquette is at the heart of surfing, as much for the safety of the surfers as it is out of respect for those who came before. “A lot of surfing is the seniority. It’s like anything, there is a hierarchy,” says Seth de Roulet. When it comes to the lineup, local knowledge trumps all. “I’m in a new spot here. Luckily because of all those years of experience, I don’t start at the bottom. I get to start higher up than most but there is still a lot of people who are more senior than me and who have the ability, and who have put the time in, to where I am definitely lower than where they are on the totem pole. You have to accept that and you have to give respect to those people.” And, he continues, “You have to have proof that you can handle yourself in the lineup. The ocean is dangerous. Surfboards are big. They are heavy. The fins are sharp. If you do not have the right level of experience to be at the wave that you’re at then you’re being dangerous. You’re putting other people’s safety in question and that is not ok. You need to be able to handle yourself in the lineup to be able to be in there.” And, he adds, “Surfers are selfish. We’re selfish beings because it’s a limited resource. There is only so many good waves. Even when the waves are good not every wave is going be the same—and this is something that people often don’t understand. They come in sets and there is going to be one wave out of the five that is going to be way better than the others. It’s a lifetime of knowledge which wave that one is going to be. You’re wrong sometimes. That’s why the better surfers get the better waves.”
Surf anywhere is a finite resource, but even more so in Bermuda. “You can go months without surf, especially here. It’s feast or famine on the island,” says Seth de Roulet. “There is probably 40 days that you could actually surf a year, but 10 to 20 days that you remember.” He adds, “That is one of the beautiful things about surfing—it’s just as much about the hunt as it is about the right waves.”
In recent years there has been a huge growth in the popularity of surfing in Bermuda, spurred on in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The year of COVID was transformative for surfing on the island—not only from a subscribership standpoint, but also physically,” says Cullen O’Hara. “We had three major storm events in close succession (in 2020). We had Paulette, we had Teddy and also Epsilon. That year we went into the Greek alphabet—that’s how active a year it was.”
He puts the surf conditions that resulted from these storms, together with a population of young people forced home from school with a less structured schedule and the desire to get outside, but needing to stay away from groups, as a unique combination of factors that created a key turning point. This, combined with the growth of social media together with the access to lessons and equipment that Isolated Surfboards and Bermuda Adventure and Surf offer, saw a whole new generation taking up surfing, including many more women and children than ever before.
Ali Watlington, who began surfing in Bermuda fifteen years ago, was for many years the only female out on the water. “It wasn’t even on my radar growing up here,” she says. “I always thought that there was no surfing in Bermuda. One day I was out at Hungry Bay and I saw some people surfing and I thought I want to do that! Now it is an absolute addiction. I surf at least once a week here in Bermuda, year-round.” She has noticed a significant change, both in the number of women taking it up and in the accessibility. “When I started, I was trying to teach myself and Bermuda is a hard place to learn if you don’t have anyone teaching you. These days, it’s so different. Cheese and Cullen have totally changed things.” She continues, “There is so much more support out there. I could barely find a women’s surfing wetsuit fifteen years ago and you couldn’t just surf in the average bikini.
It was so hard. Everything was so hard. I couldn’t even find a decent board.” She adds, “I was the only female out surfing in Bermuda for a long time, then Heather Trimingham came along, and it was just the two of us for a while. Now there are probably ten committed female surfers—myself and Heather plus eight groms (learners)—which is not bad for little Bermuda! I’ve met a great community of women through surfing, especially the women who want to learn these days. I didn’t have that when I started.”
Trimingham runs a women’s only surf chat group, which allows beginners to figure out the right conditions and equipment, which can be complicated to navigate. “I credit a big part of all the women in Bermuda starting to surf to Heather starting that chat group,” says Watlington. “It is a place for women to go and ask questions and everybody is so helpful and so supportive. It’s a very different environment from being with a group of guys who will help you with basic etiquette, but they are not going to tell you where to go, especially if it’s going to be a good wave—the idea is to keep it a secret and you’ve got to learn to read the forecast and figure it out. But that has changed a lot over the years. It really has and I really think it is women sticking together and supporting each other and really creating that sense of community.”
Community is at the heart of the re-emergence of surf. Parents are taking it up and then getting children involved, with families now often out surfing together. “You have that core group of three or four families,” says Ian Bridges, “and then other people come, and kids that I used to teach. Seth (de Roulet) has reminded me several times to turn around and look and see what I’ve been a part of.”
Schools are also getting involved. Bridges runs an after-school programme for middle-school students at MSA, alongside a co-curricular programme on Friday afternoons for Somersfield Academy where the headmaster Rikki Teteina is a keen surfer.
“We are creating a safe space for kids to be themselves,” says Bridges. “I see a big change in kids when they start surfing: confidence, strength and ability, awareness. I watch kids work together. I see kids have fun, no matter what is going on in their life.”
Last year he ran a series of surf therapy programmes for Solstice aimed at middle-school children. Clinical psychologist Dr Samantha Gerdes, who together with Bridges recently returned from the International Surf Therapy Organisation conference, explains: “Surf therapy programmes began in the 1990s as non-profit organisations, and a core premise of surf therapy is to provide an accessible and inclusive therapy that is available to everyone.
Although the research for surf therapy is very much in its infancy, studies have shown positive outcomes for children and adults with emotional distress, Armed Forces veterans, people with disabilities, neurodevelopment difficulties, adults recovering from addiction and cancer survivors.” On what makes surf therapy different from other forms of support, she says: “The power of surf therapy is that the ocean reflects back parts of ourselves that we would not otherwise see.” She adds, “If we listen, the ocean can show us what we need to heal. I have heard such powerful feedback about the lessons people have learnt during their surf therapy sessions. It is an incredible gift that the ocean can give people an opportunity to work through their difficulties in life such as fear, self-judgement, or a lack of trust in oneself and others, which often have been held onto for a lifetime.”
There are days when it is just so magic and so perfect. I show up and I’ve got the break to myself, and it just doesn’t get any better.”
ali watlington
The mindfulness aspect of surfing is something yoga instructor and life coach Ewa Gudowska focuses on in Illuminate, a series of women-only retreats which combine yoga and surfing. The one-day retreats, which returned in April for a second year running, were born from the sense of community she gained from a women’s surf group that would meet at Horseshoe every week. “Surfing brings a sense of community for women,” she says. “Surfing was a time for us to be active, to sit on the beach and to share meaningful conversations.”
She likens surfing to yoga in the way that it grounds you in your body and in the moment, in a flow state. Ali Watlington agrees “There are days when it is just so magic and so perfect. I show up and I’ve got the break to myself, and it just doesn’t get any better. It’s just me and the ocean and all my anxiety goes. It’s the one time in my day, in my world, when I am completely present and in the moment.” She continues, “I adore being in the water by myself. That independence and being totally focused on the water and nothing else that is around me in the outside world. But I also wouldn’t give that up for what we have now, which is these groups of women who all surf together in this safe, supportive environment. We form these amazing connections because we have all bonded over the same things.
We share the same passion and we’re boosting each other’s confidence. It just makes surfing so much more fun. It also makes you more committed to taking on new challenges.”
A growing community means more people in the water and more waves that have be shared. “For the older generation (and I include myself in that), we were surfing so early in the day in Bermuda that we were lucky enough to have a break to ourselves. That is just the way it was, so we appreciate that. We value that. And when we get those moments, we know how special they are because they are quite rare these days,” says Watlington. On the growth in popularity of surfing in Bermuda, she says: “I think this is the way that surfing is going and it’s fantastic. I think that you still need to be careful with the localism and be polite and wait your turn, but it is so nice to get out on the water and have people staying friendly, positive, supporting, welcoming, sharing. These are great life lessons you can take out of the water, too.”
Ian Bridges echoes the sentiment: “It’s a personal journey—for a kid, for an adult, for anybody. It’s your personal journey. That’s the great thing about it, however that journey unfolds for you, or however you want to push it. I know how much it has done for me, and I never want to let it go. I want everybody to understand it and to be a part of it and to go on their own personal journey.”
Cullen O’Hara likens the allure to a dance: “You are dancing with a piece of natural energy that’s come from thousands of miles away and that is about to reach its terminus and you get this last dance with it before it disappears forever. You can’t compare anything to that.”
Isolated Surfboards offers custom boards and equipment, alongside kids’ lessons and camps.
Bermuda Adventure and Surf offers private and group lessons for all ages, alongside surf and adventure camps and after-school programmes – bermudadventure@gmail.com
Freediving Bermuda offers surf survival workshops alongside freediving and scuba diving lessons – freedivingbermuda@gmail.com
Illuminate is a series of one-day women’s retreats which combine yoga and surfing.
Bermuda Surf Therapy plan to run group and individual sessions this year for adults and children – info@bermudasurftherapy.com
