Portrait of a Surfer: Zed Layson

I've mentioned Zed Layson a lot in the past three weeks or so. No wonder, because I stayed at one of his apartments at Surfers' Point recently. But who is he? What makes him tick? And should anyone looking to surf in Barbados try to hook up with him? What follows is a portrait of Zed, thanks to whom two important things in my life have happened: one, I got the idea for Surf Nation, and two, I survived the Soup Bowl (OK, it was only head high and on the small side for the likes of Zed, but for me it was an achievement).

"Life is like the Soup Bowl," says Zed Layson, 37. "There's an edge but you've just got to gun it and trust the wave. If you do, you'll be OK."

Thoughts and theories about a myriad of different topics abound when talking to Zed. This is a man who, besides being one of the best surfers in the Caribbean, has turned his hand to just about every job under the sun. He's run a restaurant, been a supermarket owner, operated a car valeting business and sold surf clothes. As a surfer, he's competed against the best in the world - literally. He narrowly lost to Kelly Slater after a five wave count-back in one contest at his beloved Soup Bowl, but says "I lost interest in contest surfing when I was 20. I wanted to do other things with my life."

Zed has certainly done that, but an ever-present ambition was to run a beginners' surfing centre on Barbados. His dream was realised in November 2004 with the opening of Zed's Surfing Adventures at Surfers' Point on the south-east corner of the island. "I'd been working in a watersports business when one day someone asked me to teach him how to surf. I took him to Surfers' Point and after the lesson karma played its part. I met David Giddens."

Karma is, as Zed puts it, "my king, my queen and my God." The meeting with Giddens - who knew Zed's mother Lynn - proved to be of the best kind of karma. "We got talking and one thing led to another. I now lease premises from David. Thanks to him, I was able to open up a business teaching people to surf. I'd always wanted to do this, on the one hand because it's great seeing people stoked from learning how to surf and on the other because of the danger aspect. Too many people turn up here and paddle out at breaks like the Soup Bowl when they shouldn't be there. I wanted to teach them to surf on safe, mellow waves."

Fast forward three years, and business is booming. "We're busy all year round," says Zed. "We have over 100 boards in stock." His clients arrive from the UK, the US, Germany and France as well as a number of other countries. At Surfers' Point, they will find a break that almost always has a wave, one which on its day can be a perfect, peeling, head-high left-hander. Nearby there are another two top quality surf spots - Freights and South Point. The former is suitable for surfers of every level and though mainly a left, can deliver exquisite, seemingly endless rights too. South Point is a reef break of slightly more forbidding reputation. Elsewhere on the island, Barbados cements its reputation for world class surf with breaks for experienced-to-expert surfers only such as the Soup Bowl, Duppies, Tropicana and Parlors. "Barbados is a perfect place for surfers of all levels," says Zed, "but it comes into its own for beginners. The water is warm and there are easy, forgiving waves such as Surfers' Point and Brandon's as well as a break like Freights, which caters for beginners right through to experts."

Zed speaks with the quintessential Bajan lilt and gives the impression of being laid back, at ease with everyone and everything and wholly unhurried in everything he does. This is true, but there is more to the man. Behind his ready smile and charisma, Zed is tireless, energetic, perhaps even restless; perceptive, astute, always interested in people and the world. He agrees that "I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I left school at 16 and have always been doing this and that to make a living." He once managed to sell an engine-free VW Camper Van, the profits from which went to helping support his family - and the purchase of a new board. Avowedly non-materialistic - "when money goes, life starts"  is a favourite saying - Zed will spend money on surfing. "A new board was the one thing that always struck me as worth it," he says.

Indeed, Zed shares something in common with many other high achieving men - an uneasy relationship with his father. "I credit my mother with everything," he says, his father having left the family when Zed and his sister Melinda (who helps him run the business at Surfers' Point) were small children. It is clear that his father's disappearance still rankles, but not in a way to make Zed appear bitter or resentful. "I'm just curious," he says. "I'd like to know how he decided to abandon his wife and a young family. What goes on when someone makes that kind of decision?"

Zed's drive and determination to make something of his life has been assisted by a lifelong spiritual sensibility. He narrates a number of anecdotes about key moments when "things have happened," not least when he once woke up in the middle of the night, dreaming of lines from the Bible to the effect that 'the wrath of God will descend on the errant man who refuses to change his ways.' It wasn't Zed who needed to reform, but a friend with whom he'd lost touch. How, then, to convey his dream to the friend? "I couldn't for the life of me think of how to get the message to my friend, whose image was in the dream. We hadn't been in touch for 10 years or so and things had been left a little awkwardly. But a day later my computer broke, and someone told me that my old friend was in the business of fixing PCs. So I called him. He came over and we got talking. I told him about my dream and it was as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. He told me he'd been doing far too many drugs and that his life was a mess. Next day he checked himself into rehab and sorted himself out."

While not overtly religious, spirituality and a firm moral compass are fundamental to Zed's way of life. "There are two things you should be - faithful and honest. For me that means that if I say I'm going to do something, I'll do it."

His love of surfing has seen Zed paddle out in places as diverse as Mexico, Venezuela, the US, Brazil, Jamaica, Italy, Trinidad and Tobago and even England. "I was in England with a good friend of mine - Sam Bleakley. We went for a surf at his local break. To be honest, I found it way too cold." Zed has also travelled to Haiti with Bleakley, and is contemplating another surf trip with him, to Sierra Leone. However, with marriage to his fiancee Claudia (whom he met during a surf lesson) in a few months, he reckons he might have to stay put and concentrate on wedding plans. "We'll see," he says.

What, then, has surfing given to Zed? "Peace of mind," is his unhesitating reply. "When I'm stressed, I'm happy that I have the ability to release everything through surfing." He looks forward to surfing some more - "one day, for sure" - with Bleakley, and can list a who's who of well-known British and Irish surfers as friends. "Russell Winter, Ben Baird, Richie Fitzgerald, John McCarthy, Pete Robinson, Elliot Dudley, Sam Lamiroy, Ben Skinner and Roger Mansfield have all surfed here in Barbados. Their standard is really, really good."

Zed runs his business with administrative help from Claudia and Melinda, with two instructors, Christian and Junior, working full-time. Both are excellent surfers, with Junior also rated as one of the island's best kite-surfers. Two other instructors, Bodie and Greg, also help out from time to time, and Zed's son from his first marriage, Jacob, will often be in the water with the surf school. At 12, Jacob already looks to have inherited his father's talent, and his nephew, 10-year-old Tyler, is no slouch either.

What to say, in conclusion, about Zed Layson? For me, two visits to Barbados convince me that he's one of life's gentlemen. I don't mean in an antiquated colonial fashion - far from it. I mean in the sense that he's warm, welcoming, trusting and kind. I can think of nowhere better to go for a surfing holiday, whether as an outright beginner, intermediate surfer or expert. And if you're thinking of taking the family, go for it - they'll have the time of their lives hanging out with the local crew at Surfers' Point.

Some readers might not be aware of the inspiration for Surf Nation. The idea came to me when I was sitting in the line-up at Surfers' Point two and a half years ago, on a beautiful clean day with only a turtle in the water for company. Read on below for the first chapter of Surf Nation - called, appropriately enough, 'Zed's Place' - for more on Zed Layson.

Zed's Place

It all started in Barbados. I was visiting the former British colony on a press trip and would be writing a travel piece for the Independent on Sunday. It was work, admittedly of the more miraculous kind that comes but once in a freelance hack’s life. I leapt at the opportunity with the dignity of a starving man let loose in a pizzeria, pausing only to wonder whether there was any surf in Barbados.

A quick look at Volume One of the bible of overseas surfing travel, The World Stormrider Guide, told me of breaks with names such as The Soup Bowl, Duppies, Maycocks and Freights. There were waves in Barbados, for sure – Soup Bowls was “a powerful, hollow wave,” with conditions almost always at least head-high.  “Respect the locals,” warned the The Stormrider Guide, “and be careful of the rocks and urchins on the inside.” That sounded out of my league, as did Tropicana – “a treacherous left for experts only.” Worse still was Duppies, which was not merely “a consistent, powerful right that suffers from strong currents,” but also a break “some distance offshore, reputed to be sharkey,” whose name “refers to malevolent spirits and ghosts.” It was not, said the writer of this section of the guide, for the faint-hearted:  “the vibe is heavy,” was the wholly discouraging conclusion.

I was not convinced that I would be riding any Bajan waves on this particular press trip. I grew up in Exmouth, in south-east Devon, where there are often perfect windsurfing conditions but very little by way of surfing waves. I learnt to windsurf to a reasonable level, until the dislocation of my right shoulder out at sea in a force six, 4ft swell off the Canary Island of Fuerteventura made me think that being closer to the shore might be wiser, were the shoulder ever to pop out again. In truth, it had already escaped from its socket five times, each thanks to the addictive but highly painful pursuit of skateboarding. From around the age of 22, therefore, I eschewed windsurfing and skateboarding in favour of surfing. The only trouble was that by then I lived inland.  My surfing would come on whenever I got a chance to practise, only for such ability as I mustered to recede as if it were of no more value than a piece of flotsam or jetsam, ambivalently bobbing in the shallows. There was, in short, no way that I would paddling out at The Soup Bowl or Tropicana. As for Duppies, the malevolent spirits and ghosts would have to pick on someone their own size.

But the thing about surfing is that however impoverished one’s ability, the desire to surf, for the sport’s ever-growing band of aficionados, is irresistible. The sight of a perfect wave, or of magnificent lines of swell sweeping inexorably to the shore, will make anyone who has ever experienced the sensation of surfing go weak at the knees, forget conventional notions of responsibility and obliterate knowledge of their own less-than-impressive ability. They will, unless conditions are clearly only for the insane, do everything possible to get into the water. And so it was that when I visited The Soup Bowl, and duly watched around 12 surfers performing a succession of superb moves on sizeable 6 to 8-ft waves under a grey sky, I couldn’t wait to hire a board and give it a go myself.

Not, that is, at The Soup Bowl. Even if I made the paddle-out I would be deadwood in the water, too terrified to take the vertical drop on the right-hand waves and in the way of those who knew what they were doing. No, what I needed was a mellower break. I asked one of the surfers hanging around drinking coconut juice if there was such a thing on Barbados. “Yeah, man,” he drawled. “Half an hour down the coast.  Zed’s place at Surfer’s Point. Nice and easy there.”

I set off in my hire-car and with relatively few unintended detours into sugar-cane fields found Surfer’s Point, whose resident surf God is Zed Layson. Zed is a white Bajan in his mid-30s, who runs a business called Zed’s Surfing Adventures. Boards were lined up on the lawn outside a beach house on the point owned by Zed, adjacent to which were a couple of flats that he leased out to visiting surfers. A few surfers were lounging around, watching the waves (which were not even half the size of those at The Soup Bowl) breaking to the left off the point, but they exuded the lassitude borne of spending too many days in paradise. It was lunchtime, hot and dry; the tide was starting to push back in, firming up the waves, and yet no one seemed to be able to find the energy to walk the fifty yards to the channel and paddle out, into the line up, where yet another left swept off the point, pristine and unsurfed. 

I found Zed and asked if I could hire a board. “Sure, bro, no problem,” he said, in the same drawl as the surfer who had pointed me in his direction earlier. The Bajan accent is a curious mix of Geordie and West Country sounds, delivered unhurriedly as if there is all the time in the world. Which, in Barbados, there probably is. 

None of the other surfers were tempted to join me, and so, once Zed had shown me the channel from which access to the point is gained, I had the line-up to myself. It was as near to paradise as I have found. While beachbreak surf breaks on a sandy seabed (whose bottom will vary according to swell conditions, thereby often creating variable surfing waves), point break surf carries a predictability because the waves break onto a rocky point, forcing the wave always to break to the left or right. Likewise, reef breaks, where waves emerge from deep water to hit a coral reef or rocky seabed, rising suddenly to break with precision to the left or right (and, sometimes, in both directions, as in the classic set-up at the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii). Whether a wave breaks to the left or the right is a question of the surfer’s perspective: if he is paddling for a wave and it is breaking from right to left, as he looking at the beach, the wave is a left. If it is breaking from left to right, it is a right. On that day in Barbados easy 2-3ft foot lefts rose graciously from the point, in warm, clear water, and even the sun had come out. It was early December, and as I sat waiting for waves, I imagined what it would be like to be surfing then in Britain, from which Barbados obtained independence in 1966. I knew the answer.  It would, in all probability, be wet and miserable not because of immersion in the still relatively warm water, but because of the likelihood of howling gales and rainstorms. Moreover, it would rare for one to be privy to the predictability with which these Bajan waves came off the point. 

I had a few more days on the island, and whenever I got a chance I came back to Zed’s place. There were always a few people either in the water or hanging around, pre or post surf, and Zed was always friendly, never once displaying the arrogance that some surfers seem to think is as much a sine qua non of their identity as blond hair and VW camper vans. On my last day, though, there was no sign of Zed, and, as it was when I first turned up, again the line-up was empty. Despite Zed’s earlier efforts to persuade me to take up longboarding, I opted to borrow a mini-mal from Zed’s stack of boards and soon found myself waiting in the turquoise water. A mini-mal is a hybrid between a longboard and shortboard, being easier to paddle into waves than short, performance boards but more manoeuvrable than longboards. For a few minutes, sitting on my mini-mal, I had only a turtle, bobbing in and out of view, for company. Then I was joined by a young Bajan who helped out Zed. We shared a series of lefts in a sea that was constantly changing colour. To the south, the sky was a deep black, menacingly so, suggesting that we were as likely to be struck by lightning as enjoy the surf. But to the north round to due east was cloudless and empty, save for the bright sun. The two deeply contrasting colours made for an extraordinary interplay of light on the ocean, as if to accentuate the sense of fluidity and rhythm that seems to exist simply in being there, in the sea, and made for one of the best days’ surfing in my life. 

Afterwards I talked to Zed, who had reappeared from a shopping trip to the island’s capital, Bridgetown. Born in Barbados in 1970, he started surfing when he was seven.  He grew up at South Point - round the corner from which is Freights, one of the best breaks on the island - and began competing at 12. He always made it to the finals of international events held locally; indeed, his proudest moment was coming joint first with eight-time Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) world champion Kelly Slater when he was 19, in a contest held at Soup Bowls, the most famous wave in Barbados.  Zed gestured to a board standing against a wall inside his beach house. The nose had been snapped off. “You can’t underestimate the power of The Soup Bowl,” he said, in his laconic Bajan way. “My board was broken along with 27 others at the last competition held there.” This turned out to have been just a couple of weeks earlier, in late November. The swell had been up to 15ft and the event – the Independence Pro Surfing Championships, the most prestigious surfing contest in the Caribbean - was won by a British surfer from Newcastle, Sam Lamiroy. At this, I raised my eyebrows.  Brits have occasionally done well internationally and we have even had a world champion in Martin Potter (though he was not quite the real thing, having learned his skills in South Africa, where he lived since early childhood), but ours is not a country that the world regards as synonymous with surfing. My incredulity was firmly rejected by Zed.

“A lot of Brits come over here and surf,” he said. “And a lot of them are really, really good.” 

I nodded, perhaps a little unconvincingly. “I’m serious,” added Zed. “Brits rip.  Irish guys too. I see a lot of them here, tearing it up.”

To ‘rip’ is surf-speak for to ride a wave with optimum skill. It is not a verb that would often be deployed by the international surfing press – magazines like Surfer and Surfing - of British surfers. The surfing nations – the US (including Hawaii, though Hawaiian surfers have an identity that is not American), Australia and South Africa – would blanche at agreeing even that there are decent waves in the UK, let alone surfers who rip. But Zed was having none of it. “The Brits are as good as anyone, here or anywhere else. Sam Lamiroy was on fire at The Soup Bowl. He was the best surfer in the water by far.” 

Zed cracked open a beer and we talked some more. He told me that the best wave on Barbados wasn’t The Soup Bowl but Duppies, on the north-west point of the island. I had visited it and had been struck by the way in which the layout of the reef created a whirlpool effect when just a small, two-foot swell caressed the shore. “It’s spooky,” said Zed, confirming The Stormrider heads-up. “It holds 15 to 18 foot and I’ve had the best waves of my life there. Long walls of water, just incredible. But it’s heavy, there’s a rip and sharks. The name means ‘evil ghost’ and that tells you a lot.” I asked if anything had ever compared to surfing Duppies. In reply, Zed did not mention surfing but told me a story.

“I was working at one of the hotels here, running watersports activities. For three days, this guy sat and stared at me, in the mornings when I’d arrive to pick up the guests and in the afternoons when I brought them back. I’d take them snorkelling or diving or waterskiing, sometimes even surfing, whatever they wanted to do. This guy, he just kept staring at me. He’d have the shakes as he did so and he started to give me the creeps.” Zed’s tone and manner suggested already that this might be an unusual – and non-surfing - anecdote. “Anyway, on the fourth day he walked over to me. I thought, Jesus, what does he want?  He could hardly speak to me and stuttered and jittered and asked if I would take him snorkelling up at Sandy Lane, to see the turtles.” Sandy Lane is on the west coast of Barbados, has gentler seas and houses the island’s posh hotels and huge villas. The super-rich stay there. Almost everyone who does goes snorkelling to look at the turtles. “I tell this guy, I can’t take you unless you’re in a group. It’ll cost you too much. And I’m thinking what kind of drinker is this?  Shaking like this early in the morning. What’s he after, what’s he want with me? But he says he wants to go alone, with just me, and he’ll pay whatever. I think, OK, I’ll go with it – and be careful. So I pick him up next day and we’re driving to the beach. Halfway there he says stop the car. I did and he tells me there’s something I should know. Says he’s got Parkinson’s disease and that’s why he’s shaking so badly, and asks me if I’ll keep an eye on him in the water. I say ‘Sure’ and we head on to the beach. We swim out and find the turtles. I look at his face as he’s looking at them, and it’s just amazing. He’s beaming with delight. I’ve never seen anyone look so happy.  Afterwards he asked how much he owed me. I told him nothing, the look on your face was payment enough. From that moment, I realised how lucky I am, and every day when I get up and look around and out to sea I say the same thing to myself.”

Zed wandered off to find his partner, Bettina. I fell to gazing out to sea, pondering Zed’s words. I was struck by the charm of his tale but also by his sense of British and Irish surfing. This was a man of real surfing pedigree, and so far as he was concerned, Brits ripped. I knew that Britain and Ireland have great waves, and I knew that we have some great surfers. But what I had never encountered, overseas, was this perception of British and Irish surfing ability. Formerly a great sea-faring nation, has our maritime soul metamorphosed so that we now have surfers are on a par with the Californians, Hawaiians, Australians and South Africans who dominate the international surfing media? What is the state of surfing on our Atlantic, English Channel and North Sea shores? Do our surfers have Zed’s sense of joy, good fortune and ease with the world by dint of episodes such as that which he told me, or, simply, because of their involvement in the ocean?

Zed returned with Bettina and we continued talking. I told him about a break I’d read about a lot: Thurso East, in Scotland.  “It’s one of the best right-hand reef breaks in Europe. It’s as good a wave as The Soup Bowl.” This was a somewhat speculative assertion, given that I had only ever seen pictures of Thurso East in surf magazines and had surfed neither break, but I was feeling inspired by the scene at Surfer’s Point, my own nice, easy lefts and Zed’s uncommon joie de vivre. I was, in surf-speak, stoked.

“Cool,” said Zed. Bettina smiled and nodded enthusiastically. 

I looked at Zed and said:

“How would you fancy surfing it?”

Zed pretended to shiver and made a self-deprecating comment about how he would fare in the cold. Then he broke into a grin.

“You’re on,” he said. “When are you going to be there?”

The idea for the book blossomed then. I would spend up to 18 months exploring Britain and Ireland as a surfing nation. True, Britain and Ireland are separate countries. But British and Irish surfers seemed to me to share the same, perhaps predominantly Celtic, surfing psyche. They share the same language (albeit that Gaelic is spoken in many parts of Ireland, and, indeed, the Western Isles of Scotland), and while there are inevitably cultural, historical and sociological differences among all the surfers in this book – those of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, north and south – there is one indisputable point of commonality. Those surfers occupy the English-speaking fringe of Western Europe, and, in so doing, they form a collective that, to the outside world, is largely perceived as homogenous.

So for this book, the nations would be as one. I would start in Cornwall at the UK’s biggest surfing event, the Rip Curl Boardmasters, held annually in August, and then I would zig-zag around Britain and Ireland, generally always heading north, inching my way to Thurso in Scotland and beyond – to the Orkney and Shetland Isles. En route I would try and take in key surf-spots on British and Irish shores, with a detour to the Channel Islands somewhere along the line. It might be less Endless Summer, and more Infinite Chill, but Zed liked the idea, especially as I ramped up the power and form of Thurso East. I confessed that I hadn’t been there, but described the long, walling rights that I had ogled in British surfing magazines for the past 20 years.   

“Call me just before you’re going to be there,” said Zed, “I’ll come over and surf it.”  I said I would, though I had my doubts about whether Zed would leave his island paradise for anywhere in Britain or Ireland, least of all the remote and freezing tip of mainland Scotland. But regardless: I’d find out if Brits really do rip, and assess the extent to which our maritime heritage now finds expression in what, for the Hawaiians, was, and still is, the Sport of Kings.

Photo (c) www.kirstinprisk.com

Comments

[HJ]

He seems a dude, this Zed bloke. Also nice opening chapter - I'll buy the book.

[Paul]

Nice piece. He does seem like a decent bloke with a good set-up. But what's the best flight option for Barbados from the UK?

[The Professor]

Press trips? Travel piece? Am I wrong to suggest that you always seem to be holiday Mr Wade?

[Alex Wade]

Professor,
We on the frontline of reportage can never stop. (Is there any surf where you live?)
It is a never-ending commitment, this life of never-ending commitments. All we can do is try not to end, before our end, and be ready to end, when our end renounces its commitment to all but the obituaries. I.e the end.
But until then - surf, skate and create!
Mr Wade

[claire]

we stayed with Zed november 2007 and had a fantastic time. Zed is great and his place is perfect, can't wait to go back...

[David Collins]

Great article: I've known Zed for just a few years and a more genuine, down to earth, soulful guy you couldn't hope to meet. Bloody good surfer too and as for the set-up at Surfers Point, it's the real deal. Continued success Zed. D

[Ed T]

nice work but as Paul asks, is there a cheap way to get to Barbados? i've been looking at BA etc and the prices are steep

[Zed]

Try Virgin, or XL or BMI, they can get you here.

The prce depends on the time you are coming

Zed

[Pete]

Zed's the man and Barbados is beautiful - aloha from cold water England

[cla]

I went to Surfers Point to learn to surf and my life changed: now I can surf, I've found a wonderful man and I live in paradise...thank you Zed!
Surfers Point brought me luck...!!!

[luca & arianna]

zed is fantastic. when we arrived in airport we didnt see nobody with our name's. there was much people out, all with the name of clients on hands... and there was a blonde man, blue eyes quiet and strong...was Zed that when saw us immediatly he called my name"are u luca???...nice to meet you im Zed!!!"
Surfer point is so beauty, is a magic place. Zed is reserved man, but very friendly, and really nice. he leave you live surfer point in totaly relax and you can sleep with a sound of the sea!!!
Claudia is very nice girl and together are fantastic.
Cristian is the other istructor and is a very lovely man. if i stand up on my surf is for a passion of Zed and Cristian.
it was my first time than i can to surf and it's fantstic. we come back at surfur point becouse it's a fantastic place with fantastic people.
thank you Zed
thank you Claudia
thank you cristian
thank you bobby