Code Black: Winter of Storm Surfing

by Tom Anderson

The true story of the daredevils who took on the force of nature … and won

Winter 2013-14: six of the most enormous storms ever to show up in the North Atlantic slammed in to the UK. As buildings fell and valleys flooded, one group of maverick Welsh surfers tackled the sea head-on.

Code Black tells the story of how the Welsh surf scene made history during two months in which conditions made their country rival Hawaii – apart from the cold.

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2015

About the author

Tom was born in Watford, London on the 15th May 1980. He lived with his parents in London until he saw the error of his ways only a couple of years later whereupon his family moved back to his father’s homeland of South Wales. It was inevitable that he would be drawn to the sea since his grandfather had been a top lifesaver and his father a successful competitive surfer ‘back in the day’.

Tom began surfing at the age of 11 and moved to the seaside town of Porthcawl at the age of 13. He saved up for his first custom surfboard at the age of 14 after doing a milk round for 27 weeks (=270 pounds!) working from midnight until five AM every Friday night, under the watchful eye of long-time Porthcawl Point local Gez McKay (who has since joined the police “’cause it gives you even more water time than a milk round”). By the age of 16 Tom had gained a place on the Welsh Junior Surfing team and British Junior Development Squad.

After finishing school Tom began to travel abroad as much as possible in search of better waves. During a degree in English at the University of Glamorgan, the Student Loans Company funded a large proportion of the travel which went on to form the basis of the Magic Carpet storyline.

He still had to get the odd job though and has done just about everything, including such ‘trades’ as golf caddy, caravan cleaner, bailiff, suit salesman, dishwasher, ice-cream bike operative, barman, line-feeder at a Sony factory, private investigator, canine dental machine repairman and obviously surf shop assistant.

His interests away from surfing include making so-called terminally ill cars last an extra 23,000 miles (and still counting, thank you Nissan!), watching the Welsh Football Team and Arsenal (be it at a dodgy foreign bar, in the stands of the Millennium Stadium or at Highbury/the Emirates Stadium), longboard-skateboarding, poker, basketball, reading and writing and scheming for other ways to fund more surf travel.

Reviews

[Maresa Botha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome little book that conveys the feeling much better than I would have expected. Left me wanting to know a lot more about that winter, the storms and the surfers involved.

[Book_Worm_Jim.83 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for a while, I wanted a short story to be able to read quickly to get another book for my GoodReads 2020 Challenge.

I own a few QuickReads so it made sense to read a QR and I picked this one at random.

I started reading and very quickly became immersed within the pages and the story.

This book I thought was fiction but it appears to be a fictional story based upon true events.

The events are the multiple storms that battered the UK towards the end of 2013 and for the first three months of 2014.

I found it nice that I now live in wales and this is a welsh author, I’ve lived in Aberystwyth as well and had friends who were posting about the damage and deviation that these storms were causing.

I liked the face there was a small number of local characters that you get to know a little.

I’m not a surfer so I was not familiar with some of the terminology. However, the author does provide a glossary at the rear of the book.

I would buy further works by this author after reading this book.

It was a nice easy and relaxing read, the story flowed very easy and before I knew it, I’d finished the book. I was then sad that I’d finished it as I was enjoying the read so much.