Riding the Wave

On any given day, the sight of Travis McCoy and his South Pacific Surf team guiding new surfers into the waves is a local fixture. The scene is a picture of focus and encouragement, and it speaks to a deep connection between a man, his passion, and his hometown. For Travis, this is more than a business, it’s the culmination of a life lived by the tides, dedicated to sharing the profound benefits the ocean can offer.

For a man who has built his life and livelihood around the water, Travis’ journey began with a surprising aversion. “The funniest thing is I never liked the water or being wet,” he admits with a laugh. “I thought I’d look weird in a wetsuit, and I didn’t like the thought of being cold, so I fought it.” His father, a surfer himself since his youth in Lyall Bay, tried to introduce him to the sport earlier, but it wasn’t until a trip to Whangamatā at age nine that something finally clicked. “From that day on, I just remember the first time feeling, and it was the best feeling I ever felt in my life,” he recalls. “And then I chased it from nine years old and every day since.”

That feeling became the driving force, a passion he shared and amplified with his childhood friend, Alex Dive. “Me and him fed the passion to one another, and we chased it every day,” Travis says. Naturally, this daily pursuit led them into the structured world of competitive surfing. While he found some early success on a national level, the rigid and aggressive nature of the competition circuit began to clash with the very reason he fell in love with the waves.

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“I found the more competitions I did, the harder I got on myself, and the harder it was to let it go, and the more of a negative impact that had on my mental state for surfing,” he reflects. For Travis, the soul of surfing wasn’t in a 20-minute heat with two waves to prove your worth; it was in the freedom and the art. “The competition side just really took away the freedom and the expression that you can draw from surfing,” he explains. “The competitiveness wasn’t in my nature, so I faded out from competitions when I was like 18.”

For Travis, the tension was palpable at events. A relaxed, friendly atmosphere among surfers would evaporate as soon as the contest began. “It’s just this mood shift, and it’s so tense, no one’s friends,” he says. His father’s wisdom echoed his own feelings: “My old man was always saying, you don’t have to do them, eh? That’s not what surfing’s about.”

So, Travis instead embraced what he calls the true essence of the surfing lifestyle: travel and adventure. Supported by his parents, who took him on foundational trips to Bali and Fiji as a kid, he developed a hunger to chase waves around the world.

“That’s all I wanted to do when I left school,” he says, “which I ended up doing for probably seven years or something.”

This pursuit took him to places most people only see on screens, seeking out remote, powerful waves in what he calls “strike missions”.

One such journey took him to Skeleton Bay in Namibia, a wave that had been a “pipe dream” for over a decade. “I thought I’d never get there, but we figured out a way,” he says, his voice lighting up with the memory.

The experience was more than just about the wave; it was a total immersion in a wild, raw, and untouched world. “You’re in the middle of the desert... and then you’re driving through flamingos, then you see whales are breaching, and seals are on the beach.”

The wave itself was “the best wave I’ve ever seen in my life, for sure,” a surreal experience of living out something he’d only seen on a computer screen for 12 years. This passion for travel and authentic experiences would become a cornerstone of his future, but the path to creating South Pacific Surf was anything but direct. After school, Travis found himself adrift, trying his hand at everything from building and plumbing to beekeeping, but nothing stuck.

“I was basically lost,” he confesses. The turning point came from a moment of crisis that forced a total re-evaluation of his path. A severe surfing accident at Matakana Island left him with a serious head injury from his fin, requiring 36 stitches and causing significant memory loss.

Forced onto ACC and unable to continue his beekeeping job, he found himself back at square one. During the recovery from his head injury, he started fixing surfboards in his dad’s shed and began casually taking local kids surfing for free.

It was his parents who saw the seed of his business. “My dad and my mum said, ‘Do it for a year, you never know, it might work. If it doesn’t, go back to beekeeping’,” he recalls. With that encouragement, South Pacific Surf was born in 2017, starting with just six boards, nine wetsuits, and his dad’s van.

The early years demanded total commitment. “For the first five years, it felt like I never had a day off... you’ve got to throw everything at it,” he says.
Every dollar earned was reinvested into more boards and wetsuits. “It was a massive sacrifice, but it wasn’t like it was a painful sacrifice. It was like I just sacrificed everything, but in a positive way, because I wanted it to work so bad.”

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“The local community sees what you put in is what you’re going to get back, and I feel like I have invested almost my life in the last eight years to South Pacific Surf... I think people see that in a positive way.”

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That dedication has paid off, but running a surf school at the mercy of the elements and the transient nature of tourism comes with unique challenges. One of the biggest is staffing. Many of his best instructors are travellers on one-year visas. “You get someone really good and they become ingrained in the culture and your business... but when their visa’s gone... they go, and then you start that loop again,” he explains. This is tough not just on the business, but on the kids in his surf programmes who form strong bonds with their instructors.

Through it all, Travis’ connection to the Mount Maunganui community has been a source of strength. As one of the only surf schools at the Mount that is “born and bred,” he feels his deep local roots are recognised and appreciated. “The local community sees what you put in is what you’re going to get back,” he says. “And I feel like I have invested almost my life in the last eight years to South Pacific Surf... I think people see that in a positive way.” In return, he gives back, sponsoring the Mount Maunganui Primary school and working with youth groups for kids who feel alienated by traditional schooling. He shows them that there are other paths. “You don’t have to feel like there’s this pressure. If you don’t do good at school, there’s no hope, you know?”

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This cycle of passion, authenticity, and community is what fuels Travis. The surf school is not just a business; it’s the embodiment of a lifestyle he lives and breathes. His own adventures in the off-season, chasing swells in the world’s wildest corners, feed directly back into his teaching. “In the off-season it’s like you’re out there doing what you preach,” he says. It builds character and inspires the kids he teaches, showing them the incredible, off-the-beaten-track places that surfing can take you.

Ultimately, it all comes back to that initial feeling, a feeling of joy, freedom, and connection he discovered as a nine-year-old boy. His mission now is to share it. “The more people that can experience that, and especially if I can channel that through my personal experience, at least it feels like I’m having a positive impact on people’s lives,” he says. For Travis, surfing is more than a sport; it’s a “crazy breath of wind,” and his life’s work is helping others catch it.

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To support a passionate, local story and start your own surfing journey, find out more information at: southpacificsurf.co.nz. south_pacific_surf

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Words by Christopher Duffy
Photography by Cam Neate