“I’m Done”: An 87-Year-Old Exits the Water and Forces Every Surfer to Confront Their Own Finish Line

“It's very, very sad but at this stage of life, I have decided it's time."

Almost a decade ago, I wrote a little piece about the ancient, like, just turned eighty, surfer Kev Merifield, a friend of nineties star Taj Burrow. 

“Surfing at 80 has to be every surfer’s goal,” seventeen-timer runner-up to the world title Taj Burrow said at the time. “Kev is a legend and he’s right — it’s all about getting out there, getting wet and talking shit with your boys.”

Despite having to ride prone due to a loss of equilibrium brought on by an ear injury, Kevin Merifield wasn’t afraid to hit decent-sized Margaret River for a three-hour session.

“That view is part of the reason that’s kept me going for so long,” Merifield said in a story by the fabulous sometime BeachGrit writer Anthony Pancia. “You come around the corner on a day like today and catch your first glimpse of those magnificent lines of waves. Your heart just starts racing. There’s nothing quite like it.”

How did he keep backing it up, even at such an advanced age?

Reflections on the Life of an Aged Surfer

“Obviously, you’ve also got to try and look after the old body and keep it moving,” he said.

Well, all good things come to an end, and some later than others, and Kev has finally quit the game in his eighty-seventh year. 

“It’s very, very sad but at this stage of life, I have decided it’s time,” Kev told the state press.

“I have a bit of a heart condition and having trouble with being out of breath all the time, which is not a good recipe for being out in the surf, so unfortunately time is up.”

Kev’s eighty-seven ain’t the oldest sign-off date? You remember good ol Doc Paskowitz?

Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz surfed until he was 93; a man who had developed the most common-sense guide to eating (“Pinch an inch of fat anywhere on your body and you’re overweight”) and living (“Don’t screw another man’s wife!”).

Damm, ol Doc, the Russian Jew, who went to Stanford, became a doctor, threw it all in to chase surf, introduce surfing to Israel (and later to the Palestinians of Gaza) rear children, surf up and down the American coastlines with nine kids in a 21-foot van, following his philosophy that wisdom comes not from formal education but experience, write books, teach at community college, inspire the hell out of surfers like Rob Machado and Kelly Slater and, still, in his nineties, surf the waves of Hawaii’s South Shore, albeit on his knees after his hinges gave out.

A documentary of his life was made called Surfwise and, even if he comes across as a little tyrannical, maybe crazy, the stories of him and his wife fucking in the van while the kids blocked their ears and living on gruel and beans and surfing their lives away, is an example of life as an experiment, as a Great Dream.

Surf forever? Maybe.

You ever wonder what’s going to be your sign-off age? The day when being a surfer gets too hard physically, when the bones ache too much or your seized hips ruin any mobility?

What’s it it going to be? Sixty? Seventy? Eighty?

I know a few old coots, most in their sixties, one a little over seventy, still dragging ’emselves into the water. 

The impressive thing is, none of ’em ride longboards even if it would mean more waves and a better experience. 

Instead, they persist with twin-fins and slightly thicker seven-o’s. It’s an impressive middle-finger jammed in the face of the whole surf-is-youth notion.

Check out Tony Roberts, sixty-ish.

Then you got this ol Sano Seiichi. He was eighty when he started. Ten years on, he’s still swishing around.

You?

How long are you going to persist with this life as a surfer? What will it take for you to hang up the boots? What’s the deal breaker?

Or are you going to ride this thing into the grave, heart attack in the Ments or similar, born a surfer die a surfer?