“I Thought My Arm Had F***ing Snapped In Half” — Irish Tube Merchant Gearóid Mcdaid

Does the luck of the Irish actually work on the Irish themselves?

Gearoid McDaid’s recent injuries suggest he’s either immune to such mythology or that someone, somewhere, produced a voodoo doll of the Sligo goofyfooter — and is having way too much fun with it.

“After last Christmas, the waves were super fun and pumping every day,” Gearóid told Stab while recounting how he got injured at Pmpa. “It wasn’t even big. I just came out of a little barrel, kicked off, and got dragged across the reef.”

His arm got wedged under a ledge on the inside, hyper-extending his elbow and tearing ligaments on both sides. “I thought my arm had fucking snapped in half — but it could’ve been worse.”

Severe injury when surfing around these parts of Ireland seems as inevitable as getting wet. “A few of the boys got pretty banged up at Mully the other day,” he said. “I think they came out worse than I did, so I’m lucky it wasn’t anything too bad.”

Funny how injuries often seem to happen when the waves are within the fun zone. Thinking back to the start of winter, Gearóid recalled one such situation: “I blew my shin open with my board, doing an air. I landed straight on my fin, and it completely popped my shin. Ended up needing like 20 stitches.”

Then there are those sessions when the waves spill their guts like a dragon with severe heartburn — paddling ceases to be an option, and everything screams disaster. Yet, on days like that, he somehow manages to paddle back into the safety of the jagged rock shelves — the only thing separating the emerald fields above from the murky, uninviting, and unforgiving ocean out front.

The session documented and uploaded to the tube was one of those rare days when everything clicked at Riley’s. “You go down there so many times thinking it’s going to be like that, and it’s just never like that. There’s always something wrong with wind, swell, or tide. To get a day like that, it’s pretty lucky.” 

Riley’s is a peculiar beast — the wave breaks in the same place regardless of its size. Paddling it on those maxed out days is nothing short of a suicide mission. 

“At three or four feet, it’s the funnest little slab ever. But once it gets to that four-to-six-foot range, it turns into a completely different wave. Those six-footers are just so hard to paddle. They become so thick and heavy that they surge over the slab.”

Once it hits six feet, the local crew switches to towing. “It’s a pretty sick wave to tow, as long as it doesn’t go dry or close out on you, it’s pretty good!“

Now, the type of towing done here couldn’t differ more from the strap-on kind that we’ve been force-fed by mainstream media. “We don’t tow with straps, and we ride normal boards. I just tow with the same board I paddle.

“I don’t think I’d like foot straps there. I like to be able to move my feet — for bottom turning and adjusting in the barrel — because the water sucks off the reef so high. You have to be able to move pretty quick.”

Dry-docked as this clip enters the internet maelstrom, Gearóid has been pondering how to extend his professional career. “While I’m injured, I want to put together a couple of those super session clips like this one.” To be fair, he told us that was one of the best sessions he’s had. Also in the works — but dropping soon — are sessions at Mully, Pmpa, and other places.

As honorable as it would be to resist the pull of the vlog, going forward, he admits that “they’re the way it seems to be going.”

“I’m going to try to keep it real — show who I am and what surfing in Ireland is actually like — and try to not make it a cringy vlog.”