Lost Shore showdown for Scotland's surfing superpowers
The 20th edition of the Gathering of the Clans surfing competition showed how much the sport is thriving in Scotland, writes Roger Cox
It may have been a grey, bone-chilling day, but the edge of the Lost Shore wave pool just outside Edinburgh was still packed last Saturday afternoon, as the finals of the 2025 Gathering of the Clans contest got underway. That poolside crowd contained a Who’s Who of Scottish surfing royalty, too. Among the well-wrapped-up onlookers were east coast pioneers of the 1960s Andy Bennetts, Bill Batten and Ian Wishart; Sheila Finlayson, nine-time winner of the Women’s Open title at the Scottish National Championships between 1986 and 2008; William Watson, who played a major role in creating the Clans event 20 years ago; and Pat Kieran, who was among the first to surf now-famous Caithness spots like Thurso East and Brims Ness back in the 1970s. No pressure then.
The Clans is a club competition, bringing together teams from all around the country and taking in various different age groups and disciplines. The North Shore Surf Club, based in Thurso, had won the event for six years in a row up until last year, when Fraserburgh’s Broch Surf Club finally broke their winning streak. The question this time: could the Brochers do it again?
The Under 18 Boys final could hardly have been closer, with Rudi Johnston Forrest of Belhaven Surf Club edging out Broch’s Israel Noble by a fifth of a point, while in the Under 18 Girls another Broch surfer, Callie Cruikshank, came out on top, with North Shore Surf Club’s Olivia McKay in second. Malcolm Findlay, himself one of the original generation of surfers in Scotland, kept the Broch flag flying in the Longboard final, finishing third behind Tom Marr of Edinburgh and Borders Surf Club and Hannah Sharp of Belhaven Surf Club, and demonstrating the timelessness of smooth style in the process.
Going into the last three finals of the afternoon, then, a second consecutive Clans win for the Broch was still a definite possibility. In the Masters final, North Shore’s Dylan Fogarty-Macdonald looked to have things all wrapped up with just a couple of minutes left on the clock. However, he hadn’t reckoned with Craig Sutherland of Sandend Surf Club, who conjured the highest scoring wave of the final right at the death to take the win, with Fogarty-Macdonald in second and the Broch’s George Noble in third.
The Open Women’s final was also a nail-biter. North Shore Surf Club’s Phoebe Strachan, the reigning Scottish national champ, was lagging behind the Broch’s Callie Cruikshank for much of the heat, but a strong score on her penultimate wave suddenly put her within striking distance. Her final wave wasn’t quite enough, though, leaving her in second place, with the Broch’s Lola Mitchell in third and Strachan’s North Shore teammate Olivia Mackay in fourth.
With no Broch surfers in the Open Men’s final, but Team Scotland regulars Mark Boyd and Craig McLachlan still requiring a 1-2 finish to seal the overall win for North Shore, all the Broch team could really do as the last heat of the day took to the water was hope that either Gonzalo Zapater of Belhaven Surf Club or Finn Clark of Edinburgh and Borders Surf Club could somehow cause a major upset. In the end, though, it wasn’t to be, with Boyd and McLachlan putting on a masterclass, the former repeatedly vaporising the lip with powerful top turns, the latter blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fast and determined to land an air reverse (which he eventually did). McLachlan’s acrobatics secured him the win by a point-and-a-bit, and it was Team North Shore who got to unfurl their flag on the podium and smile for the cameras. These days, though, the difference between the two superpowers of Scottish surfing is slimmer than a high-performance fin.
As well as the 20th edition of the Gathering of the Clans contest, last weekend also marked the 50th anniversary of Scottish Surfing, formerly the Scottish Surfing Federation, the sport’s governing body, and on the Friday night Lost Shore hosted a panel discussion with four legends from across the generations: Andy Bennetts, Sheila Finlayson, Phoebe Strachan and Mark Boyd.
We got to hear the panelists’ thoughts on everything from the importance of trying to clean up the marine environment to the training benefits of wave pools, and we heard some colourful surfing origins stories too, particularly from Finlayson, who was a 15-year-old schoolgirl at Thurso High School when she spied some old surfboards stacked in a garage, and – inspired by an Old Spice advert off the telly – persuaded a young maths teacher, Mr Culley, to take her and her friends surfing. Not for them the gentle beachbreak waves of nearby Dunnet Bay, however. First they tried the heavy reefbreak at Thurso East (“because the waves there looked like the ones in the Old Spice ad”) and when that didn’t work out they ventured into the even more serious waves breaking at Brims Ness, all the while using taped-on Marigolds in lieu of wetsuit gloves.
Still, at least they had wetsuits – when Andy Bennetts first started surfing in the late 1960s, he had no such luxury. The lack of insulation didn’t stop him catching the bug, however, and by 1975, he was among the core group of surfers, along with Ian Wishart, Bill Batten and Malcolm Findlay, who set up the Scottish Surfing Federation. On the evidence of last weekend, their creation remains in excellent health.
For more on Scottish Surfing, see www.scottishsurfing.scot
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