“The camaraderie is the great thing about it,” says Andy Cox, solicitor turned deputy coroner for Cornwall. “It’s taken seriously at the time but afterwards everyone enjoys a beer or five.”

Despite its stresses, Cox is not talking about his work as a coroner. He is referring to one of conventional stand-up surfing’s close cousins – surfboat rowing. Cox has been involved in the spectacular, action-packed sport for slightly more than a decade. “It’s wave-riding, as in surfing, but with a difference,” he explains. “You’re part of a team trying to control a 180kg fibreglass boat in sea conditions that can range from calm to rough. It gets pretty hairy sometimes.”

Cox grew up in Cornwall and represented the county as a water polo player. His love affair with water continued when he developed a passion for surfing, which he continued while working, for 15 years, as a solicitor in the South-West. It was in 1997 that Cox discovered surfboat racing: “I’d relocated to Cornwall after a spell in Somerset and would often surf my local beach, Perranporth. I’d watch as the surfboat rowers went through their paces and one day I popped into their club. I got talking and having a go at what they did instead of surfing became more and more tempting.”

The surfboat rowers trained at Perranporth Surf Lifesaving Club, and before long Cox had been issued with a challenge. “The club had a number of excellent triathletes and one of the best surfboat rowing teams in the country,” Cox recalls. “I was basically told ‘If you think you’re handy in the surf, come and have a go at what we do.’ It was a challenge, certainly.”

It was one that Cox was happy to accept. Surfboat racing involves a team of four rowers and a sweep - the equivalent of a cox in flat-water team rowing - paddling out through breaking surf, rounding a buoy and returning to the beach. The surfing element comes when the team catches a wave and uses its momentum to ride the boat to the beach. The hard work isn’t over until a designated oarsman has leapt from the boat and sprinted, over strength-sapping sand, to the finish line. The surfboat scene in the UK has burgeoned in the past two to three years, and is especially popular in Devon and Cornwall.

Cox is now the sweep for the Perranporth veterans’ team. “I still row sometimes but reluctantly,” he says wryly. “I spent a decade competing as an oarsman and I’m happy enough to have earned a place as sweep.” Tanned and heftily built, Cox looks every inch the dedicated waterman, and his love of one of Britain’s fastest growing watersports is palpable. “You catch a wave farther out to sea than when you’re surfing,” he says. “It’s a different feeling to surfing because you’re in a boat rather than standing on a board, but there’s a massive adrenalin rush when you know that you’ve caught a wave. It’s just as intense as conventional surfing.”

As intense, and as spectacular. In rough seas surfboats often collide and capsize, making the discipline one of thrills, spills and no little skill. “It’s very demanding and we often find that the flat-water rowers, while technically far superior as oarsmen, have difficulty handling the sea because it’s such an unknown quantity,” Cox says. “But when you get it right, it’s a fantastic example of team-work and co-ordination coming together. It’s irresistible.”

Cox readily agrees that surfboat racing provides him with stress relief. “I haven’t had quite what Lord Justice Scott Baker has had on his plate in the Diana, Princess of Wales, inquest,” he says, “but a coroner’s work entails sensitivity allied with a rigorous analysis of the facts and evidence in a given case. It definitely has its stresses but getting in the water and racing is the best stress-buster there is.”

That, and the post-race camaraderie. “Surfboat racing has a very sociable post-race scene,” Cox says. “The size of the surf always doubles by the end of the night.”

For more information see www.perranporthslsc.org.uk and www.uksrl.co.uk

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