Dessie still riding the crest of a ‘wave’ two decades on

He’s a 25-time Irish champion, a winner of a European title hat-trick and has finished second in the one of the world’s biggest competitions, but the chances are you’ve never heard of Dessie McGlinchey.

And that’s because the sport he’s involved in – Surf Kayaking – doesn’t get the attention it, perhaps, deserves in the mainstream media.

The Castlederg native has been involved in the sport for a couple of decades now, testing himself on some of the world’s best waves during that time and against the best exponents of the discipline across the globe, achieving success in the process.

But it was never an ambition for McGlinchey to become an Irish Surf Kayaking legend.

How he got involved in the sport is a serendipitous story that begins near Limavady’s well-known ‘Dog Leap’ on the River Roe and much like that particular stretch of water, it eventually led the now 50-year-old to the oceans of the world, although he admits he was far from ‘a natural’ on the water.

“I was a terrible learner on the rivers, I was shocking!,” admitted the father of three who acknowledges the good fortune he’s had to travel the world doing an activity he loves, making life long friends along the way in a sport that fosters ‘camaraderie’.

He added: “Through time and practice you get better and better and your confidence grows. It just takes time.

“I went to the Tech [studying Leisure and Sport] in Limavady and it was part of the course you had to get your level three in personal kayaking.

“That was the start of the formal instruction and while the gear back then was made by Tetley, it was full of holes, you’d have been wet and freezing, but I’ve been lucky because I’ve been fortunate to have found a sport that allows you to travel, see a lot of places and meet a lot of people.

“People I competed against 20 years go, I’m still in contact with them and I can go and stay in their house. It’s that sort of sport, people trust each other and they get on because it’s like-minded people.

“There’s a great camaraderie, everyone looks out for each other and if any of the kayakers come to Ireland they’ll connect with me somewhere along the line and I’ll take them to a few spots.

“In September, I had the World Champion over and spent a few days with them down in Sligo, showing them a couple of places. It’s a small sport, so everyone knows everyone, you can get advice from everyone. It’s great, it’s good that way.”

Surf Kayaking takes place in purpose-built carbon fibre closed cockpit boats to ensure lightness, manoeuvrability and safety and like surfing, from which it is derived, there are long and short boat classes of competition which sees participants show their skills on waves, which are then scored by a team of judges.

Dessie started in the more traditional style of white water kayaking, learning the skills that have served him well on the ocean on various rivers in Ireland and across the world, including in Nepal where he spent a month exploring the white water there in 1998, which is when he started thinking about moving from fast flowing rivers, to the mighty ocean breaks.

“There’s plenty of white water in Ireland. Donegal is very good and Fermanagh too and I was white water background for years and we’d have paddled in the French Alps, Italian Alps as well, quite hard white water, and I’d have done some expedition kayaking out in Nepal as well,” he explained

“I think that [time in Nepal] was me coming towards the end [of his white water career] because I think my ambition was going to outweigh my ability. We were starting to do stuff that was just getting harder and harder, getting away with stuff at times.

“I just thought, ‘I’m going to get myself in trouble here’ so I backed away from it,”

As well as the danger that can come with white water kayaking, Dessie also factored in the necessity of a ‘team of people’ for safety and logistical reasons, which is one reason why he soon realised surf kayaking might work out better in the long-run, especially when he considered that he could jump into his car outside his Enniskillen home and be at the coast in less than an hour.

“To go to paddle rivers you need a team of people, which makes it difficult, whereas it’s 40 minutes down the road to the surf, so it was a lot easier to get to rather than trying to get four or five lads together and having to wait for the rain [for suitable water levels] and stuff like that,” he observed.

While he thoroughly enjoyed his white water days, they were just for fun and it wasn’t until he moved onto the seas that he was introduced to the competitive side of the sport, dipping his toes into that particular water in the early 2000s, which led to himself and a small band of paddlers driving the sport in Ireland forward in the process.

“The World Championships came to Ireland in 2003 and I thought ‘we’re going OK here but we want to go and see what the standard is like’ so I went to America to compete in one of the big ones and at the halfway stage I was ranked number one,” Dessie said.

“I didn’t win it, but I came back knowing we weren’t far away and I was able to come back and tell the other guys ‘we’re on it, we’re close to that standard’ and while I never won a World Championship, some of our juniors did and a couple of others went on to win seniors and that was all from the foundation that was laid in the early noughties by half a dozen of us.

“Time was against us – I didn’t start until I was 29, but we brought young lads into the sport and 13 or 14 and by the time they became seniors they had three or four world’s under their belts. It takes time to build up the experience of competition.”

While he may not have been crowned World champion, yet, he has enjoyed phenomenal success on the waves, winning 25 Irish titles – 13 open men, the last of which came in 2023, and 12 masters (over 40s) – one British Open, three European crowns back-to-back from 2004 to 2006 and he won the prestigious Santa Cruz competition in California while on his honeymoon!

“I competed at the European Championships for 10 years and I made the final every time, and was on the podium every single time,” he beamed. “So, I podiumed for 10 years and I won three of them back-to-back.

“I also got a British Open in 2006 and in ‘07 we [Dessie and wife Grainne] went on our honeymoon to America and my wife was very good and kind to let me delay our honeymoon so it would coincide with a competition.

“It was at the end of the trip – we’d been out before in 2003 – in Santa Cruz and that was the icing on the cake at the end of the honeymoon because it would still be ranked as the biggest one in the world outside of the World Championships because of where it is at Steamer Lane, which is a famous wave in California.

“That was March time and then that summer I won a big event in Portugal which was also called Santa Cruz, so I won two Santa Cruz’s in one year which was a big thing. It was lovely.

“And my last World Championships were in 2009 in Portugal and I got second in them. I led for 14 and a half minutes and with two and a half minutes to go a Basque lad got a wave and just got ahead of me and I just didn’t have the time to get another wave of that standard, but that’s the way it goes in competition.”

Since then, Dessie’s participation level in top-rank competition has dropped as his and Grainne’s family has grown from two to five. But he hasn’t stopped completely and he’s already looking ahead to 2027 when he hopes to take advantage of the super Irish breaks to finally become a World Champion on home water.

“When the kids came along I sort of stopped travelling, but I still compete in the National’s here, the Irish Open,” he explained.

“I think I’ve missed three since 2004, but it’s the one event I have done consistently because financially it’s difficult to justify going away for a month somewhere and leave everyone at home.

“But the good news is the World Championships are coming back to Ireland in 2027, so I’m going to have a go at winning one of the old boy titles!”

Before then, Dessie is hoping to join the illustrious ranks of becoming a Guinness World Record holder after he was recorded hitting 30 miles per hour on a wave just over a month ago.

“With the technology and the GPS on the cameras, I managed to clock – it won’t sound like a lot – 30 miles per hour,” he explained.

“To my knowledge, I’ve never seen anyone clock that speed before, so I asked a few people what their top speed was and no-one has come anywhere near that, so I sent it off to the Guinness World Records people to see what will happen, to see if we can get my name in the book.

“The quickest I’ve ever gone before was 24mph, so that as a big jump, it’s nearly 50 kilometres per hour.

“I have a land clip and the GPS from the onboard camera, so we’ll see what happens. I don’t know how it works and they might come back and say they won’t recognise it, but it would be great to be the fastest human powered kayaker!”

*Anyone interested in getting involved in surf kyaking can contact their local clubs – Erne Paddlers, who do pool sessions in Omagh, or Foyle Paddlers in Derry – or some of the commercial outdoor pursuit companies.