I really enjoyed this book. It fills you with a sense of child-like adventure. Finnegan spent his life scratching his itch for surfing. Chasing the best waves in the world. Along the way its clear he kept detailed journals. Because the depth he goes into when telling stories from his childhood and young adult years is what makes the book so great. It’s an autiobiography, but the quality of the storytelling lends an element of fiction to it as well (as with all good biographies).
Finnegan grew up in California but the family moved to Hawaii at a young age. Both great surfing destinations of course, and Hawaii seems to be the place that he really came into his own as an independent surfer. After leaving school and being in and out of university, he set off on a mission to circumnavigate the world, chasing the globes best waves with a friend of his, Bryan. After about 2 years of doing exactly that, he settled down in South Africa for a while to teach at a school and surf some of the local waves. Eventually he moved back home to California where he tells stories of the undergroud surfing scene there that most are unaware of. The book finishes up with him in New York, writing full time as a journalist and often running off to New York’s (much colder) waves.
Throughout the book a few things stick out.
A “way of life”: The love of surfing has been a rare constant throughout his life. Over 40 years since starting, he will still drop what he is doing at a moment’s notice and run off with a wetsuit to catch a wave in the freezing cold seas of New York. It really makes you want to find your own passion, whatever your own version of surfing is.
Risking it all for a wave: Along a similar vein, the risks of injury that himself and his friends often took is impressive. A lifelong passion yes. But never anything more than the next wave. Surfers dont look at the sport as a whole very often. Instead they think “is it worth it for this wave?”. The answer is almost always yes.
Surfing friendships: Finnegan made new friends through surfing from the age of 14 all the way through to 40. Never short of a kind person to share the sport with.
Growth through travel: By meeting new people and seeing new cultures, he clearly developed a new way of looking at the world. A more complete one. In moving to Hawaii with his family he had left western culture. And travelling in his 20s simply continued to widen his perspective.
Always writing: This may not surprise many people, but as a budding writer and journalist he was always writing. Journals for his personal use. Articles for travel and surf magazines. A novel of his own. This shouldn’t surprise that many, but it’s worth noting that, as usual, the best way to do what you want to do professionally is to do a shit-load of it non-professionally first. There’s rarely a short cut.