Nancy Meherne is determined to keep surfing as long as she can ‘do a little jump’ to get on the waves

Last modified on Wed 29 Dec 2021 00.10 EST

Nancy Meherne lives a simple life by the sea, gardening and riding the soft, mellow waves at Scarborough Beach just a couple of blocks from her house.

The 92-year-old’s now pumice-like board was made in New Zealand in the 1970s by a factory that churned out gumboots and other rubber and foam products.

Unlike its owner, it’s a little worse for wear (its blue and red pattern is long gone) – but it’s easy to carry and suits the nonagenarian just fine.

Often wearing just a swimsuit, despite summer water temperatures ranging from about 14C to 18C, the grandmother of seven wades out until she’s waist-deep, waits for the perfect wave and jumps on.

“Other [surfers] respect me,” Meherne says, suspecting she draws their attention “because I’m old”.

“They’re waiting up the top [of the esplanade], saying, ‘Yeah, you did alright today’. I like to see a nice big one coming and a gap. You can’t get on one little wave after another. You wait until you see a big wave and then you come in on that. I love just speeding in. You’re moving so quickly, it’s really good.”

Born in Wellington in 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression, Meherne says her life has been full, with “never a dull moment”.

In her early 20s, after training and working as a schoolteacher, she left New Zealand by ship to study and work in England and Europe, spending her weekends and holidays exploring the region, hitching rides, sleeping on train platforms and staying in youth hostels.

She recalls once bedding down in a cemetery in a small French village with a friend, because there was nowhere else to stay, sneaking away at dawn because “we didn’t know if we’d be very popular doing that”.

Her travels also took her to India, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, where she taught at a school for three months.

After returning to New Zealand, Meherne raised three children with her husband, Doug, while teaching in primary schools and tutoring at a music school.

Her teaching philosophy was similar to her life philosophy: “You’ve got to have fun.”

Meherne spent her early years living inland on the edge of a national park in the central North Island before moving to Whanganui on the west coast.

She remembers seeing the ocean for the first time and being shocked at its scale.

“I just thought water came in small quantities.”

A keen swimmer and surf life saver in her youth, Meherne says she didn’t pick up surfing until her late 30s or early 40s when she was living in Sumner and started borrowing her son’s board.

“I never did try and stand up, but I loved it. I’d go whenever I could.”

Simon “Honeybee” Brown, 63, is a founding member of the Sumner Longboarders club and reckons Meherne qualifies as a surfer, despite not standing up, “because she’s not just going down there for a swim; she’s going down to get rides”.

Brown has been seeing Meherne out in the water on and off for 40 years and says she’s an inspiration to many.

“She’s still got the very same board, which is pretty cool. She’s used it so much all the colours have worn off.”

A keen vegetarian, Meherne credits her good health to a sugarless diet established by her parents, which was partly due to her father’s serious health problems after being wounded in the first world war.

She no longer drives but cycles around Sumner and keeps limber by going to exercise classes and dancing to classical music on her FM radio.

Meherne will be 93 in August and says she will keep surfing for as long as she is able to “do a little jump” to get on the waves.

Brown says he isn’t sure he’ll still be surfing after as many laps around the sun.

“She has definitely kept the bar pretty high there. She has aged but she hasn’t got old – you know what I’m saying?”