Surftwisted Surf Magazine

Alex “the human blood hound” Wade has really over stepped the mark this time ! Rumours abound that during a recent “Doodle and Pint for a Quid” evening at the Old Success Inn, Seb Smart inadvertently left a number of drawings allegedly of local surf dude JD Hogg, AKA  Axel “deadly” Dawe, lying on the Bar. Wade, famous around these parts for turning up at last orders to empty the slop trays has since been uncontactable…………… you decide.

Here’s a piece I penned for the latest issue of Pit Pilot on Axel ‘Deadly’ Dawe, an underground charger if ever there was one.

Legend, n. A person having a special place in public esteem because of striking qualities or deeds, real or fictitious.

Smarts impression

“I’ve never liked the nickname,” says Dawe, who, in the mid-Seventies, swore that by the time he was 43 he’d have surfed every surf spot in the UK. “I was christened ‘Deadly’ after a session at Leven in ’83. It was big, sure, but I don’t think what I did that day was anything special.”

Dawe’s exploits at Porthleven in the summer of 1983, aged 17, have gone down in surfing folklore. He rode the south coast reef at seven times overhead, with no one else out, and has the scars to prove it. His face has a livid, deep red line running from his left eye to his chin, the result of a fin lacerating him on a wipeout. The same session saw a different fin tear open his backside. He shrugs off these injuries as “all part of what goes with being a surfer. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Dark-haired Dawe was born in Birmingham but moved to a secret spot in Cornwall when he was five. To this day, he has never told anyone where it is. “That’s the code,” he says. “If I talk about it, people will be all over the place like a rash.” But respect for his parents also plays a part in his diffidence. “Dad was an international diamond thief and Mum used to launder his money,” he says. “When they moved to Cornwall Dad made me and my seven sisters swear we’d never tell anyone where we lived. It’s a killer spot so I didn’t mind.”

By his early teens Dawe was to be found ripping at any number of UK breaks. Thanks to a witness protection scheme, his parents adopted new identities. Dawe’s father became a Maths teacher in Mousehole while his mother worked as a chiropractor in Croyde. Dawe says that parental job dislocation helped his surfing. “I was constantly shuttling back and forth between Sennen and Saunton,” he says. “It was impossible for me not to rip.”

At 43, Dawe is one of those surfers you see turn up and shred, but you can’t quite place who he is or where’s he from. That’s just the way he likes it. “I know who I am, what I did and what I didn’t do, and that’s enough for me,” he says.

But Dawe has made evanescent appearances in surfing magazines. Speaking to him in a Penzance café, he showed me old copies of Carve and Wavelength, as well as the newer mags such as Pit Pilot and Slide. Time and again Dawe is tearing it up – and every time the caption follows a predictable pattern: “Unknown ripper at Fistral”, “Unidentified charger at Thurso East” or simply “Exactly who is this man?”

Dawe, dressed in golf slacks, allowed himself a rare smile as I flicked through the magazines. He looks fit and healthy, if a little overweight, and has the deep, weathered tan of the dedicated surfer. “I’ll surf til I die,” he says. With his scar helplessly contorting as he speaks, Dawe looks menacing, and yet his blue eyes betray a curious vulnerability. I can’t help but wonder: what prompted his strange quest to surf every British wave by the time he was 43? And how has he fared?

“My Dad was 43 when he gave up stealing diamonds,” is his reply. “I fell in love with British waves and knew that the surf would never be better, wherever I went. I decided to nail every wave by the time I was 43 to honour my Dad.” Fair enough, but doesn’t he ever fancy a trip to France or Portugal, or further afield, to Indo or California?

“Maybe,” he says, “but I’ve still got 47.8% of UK waves left to surf.”

I suggest that, for a man who has spent his life surfing domestic waves, he’s still got a long way to go. Perhaps he’s failed to honour his Dad? Dawe smiles at me contemptuously. “You have no idea. We’ve got world class gems in all kinds of nooks and crannies.”

With that, Axel Dawe is gone. A bejewelled and yet lonely, haunted man – he has never married, and sources say the incident at Leven when he was 17 injured more than just his face and rectum – he walks away, without a backward glance. As I reflect on my encounter with the UK’s most hardcore twin fin underground surfer, a well-known surf writer arrives. “Wasn’t that Axel ‘Deadly’ Dawe?” he says. Having been granted a rare audience with British surfing’s most mysterious charger, I opt for silence.

Later, I leave the café thinking of the nice waitresses and then, just as I am about to play a The Illinois Enema Bandit by Frank Zappa, Dawe’s famous saying hits me: “The kooks may inherit the earth - but they can fuck off if they think they’re having the waves.”