Women Are Finding Surf, And Community, In Raglan

This group of Whāingaroa surfers is bringing female empowerment to the waves, while tossing sexism to the sand.

Nestled beneath the lush peaks of Whāingaroa’s Mt Karioi is Ngarunui Beach. It’s a black strip of sand shouldered by cliffs adorned with fluffy toetoe, met with the consistent swell of the Tasman Sea.

Once a week, no matter the weather, Nina Nouk arrives in her faded red 1987 Ford Laser. The car’s filled to the roof with surfboards, and Nina’s painted over patches of rust on most of the panels.

She shimmies into her wetsuit, chatting to a group of 10 women filling the parking spaces beside her. They’re heaving and tugging at neoprene, chatting about the whitewater, barrels and wipeouts of the beach below them.

The group gathered is called The Dames (previously Surf Dames). It’s a surf club for women, started by Nina two years ago. She moved to Raglan from France six years ago and decided to properly take up the sport.

“When I showed up in Raglan, I was a bit lost in my surfing,” she says. The first time she’d given the sport a try back in France, she got a fin to the head and ended up getting stitches. “I was scared of judgment, I was scared of going down to the beach with my board and everyone watching me. I was stuck in my head, aware that I was a woman and didn’t know where to go. When you’re surfing, you feel completely naked. It’s a hard sport because the playground [the ocean] is always moving.”

After some time, she became a surf coach in the small west coast beach town and fell in love with the sport. “I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I have the power to create a community out of this’.” As it turns out, she did.

Now, the club has 30 official members who pay a small yearly fee for unlimited surf sessions, a T-shirt and stickers (which many tend to put on their cars). The community Nina’s building isn’t limited to the club, though; the private Facebook group she manages has more than 300 women members.

Before heading down to the carpark to get changed, Nina has everyone meet at a lookout point above the waves. She explains the ocean’s movements of the day, and then when the crew get down to the beach she maps out how rips work, drawing diagrams in the sand.

Much of the drive of Nina’s passion is to combat the hyper-individualised competitiveness she observes in sports.

“We teach people and kids that you need to succeed by yourself. To me, this is so wrong,” she says. “I want to try and make the girls understand that we all need support. We don’t need to be one successful person, we can be one successful crew. I teach the crew how to look out for each other. To check who’s around you, and if at one stage you don’t see a person for a while, check the waves again to see if they’re okay.”

Despite surfing’s free-spirit, ocean-loving nature, reports from the women in The Dames paint a sometimes aggressive, sexist nature to the sport. Historically, this has also been the case. For many decades, female competitive surfers fought for equal prize money, an unsexualised image and fair access to reputable waves.

READ: Why Surfing Has Been A Revelation For Cookbook & Wellbeing Author Eleanor Ozich

In a now-infamous quote, former surfing world champion Damien Hardman spoke of how he felt about women surfers in the 1980s: “I think they just need to look like women. Look feminine, attractive and dress well,” he said.

Finally, in 2018, pay equality brought some reparations; the World Surf League announced it would award equal prize money to women and men.

For The Dames member Tilly Hiscock — who recently moved from Melbourne to Raglan — female surfing groups have given her the confidence to enter the male-dominated playground. “[On the Mornington Peninsula, in Australia] there’s a bit of a point break and a women’s group started meeting there and that’s why I started surfing,” she says. “They made it so much more accessible; you could see the difference, the second a female paddled out into the water it became a less angry environment.”

Tilly says patronising, from the direction of men and even young boys, has been part of her experience. “The assumption that I couldn’t surf was always there and it’s still there now,” she says. Just recently, she was surfing at Whale Bay — a nearby point break — and the conditions were between five and six foot waves.

“This guy paddled out and he’d never seen me surf and I’d never seen him before, and when I turned around and started paddling [to catch a wave] he shouted ‘Go, go, go, go, go’ at me. It wasn’t helpful, as I knew I could catch the wave, and it was patronising. He’d never do that to any of the other men in the water and there was this assumption that I was out of my comfort zone and wasn’t meant to be there.”

Despite the barriers she’s faced as a woman surfer, Tilly’s happy place is out in the ocean. “The Dames is an epic group full of stoke for women in the water. It prioritises supporting each other and being safe in the ocean. I love that the group brings together people of all ages and stages of their surfing journey… I keep coming back because of the pure joy we have in the water together, whether it’s clean peeling waves or mushy whitewater.”

Lisa Mito Fox has shared enthusiasm for The Dames. She joined the group after always dreaming of surfing — but having mostly lived in urban Auckland, she’d never taken it up. When she moved to Whāingaroa, she says the sport and The Dames gave her a chance to connect with her Samoan heritage.

“Surfing’s such a male-dominated sport, so I would have been way less likely to go along if it wasn’t a female group,” she says. “I love being in the ocean and I think about it quite spiritually; when I’m in the ocean I feel connected to my ancestors. I think about the travel that we did to get here to the Pacific, and when I’m really terrible in the surf I think to myself, ‘Your ancestors way back were Hawaiian, our people invented this!’ Feel the moana and go with it,” she says, laughing.

In October, Nina is holding a week-long retreat in Bali. It will be a chance for female surfers to experience The Dames in the tropical waters of Balian Beach on the Indonesian island. But back in New Zealand — and despite the cooler months ahead — The Dames plan to head to the beach every week.

“When I surf, I feel light,” Nina smiles. “I feel like a leaf floating in the water. When you’re out there, it’s such a peaceful place — you forget about your day.”

The Dames in Bali will take place October 1-7 at Balian Beach. To book, email Surfdamesretreat@gmail.com