Eventually, he married and settled in Bundoran permanently in 2006 where he works as a writer and a teacher. He and his wife live feet from the ocean — facing the fearsome Pampa surf break — and amid what is quietly described by those who know as one of the most wave-rich coastlines (from Enniscrone in Sligo to Rossnowlagh in Donegal) on the planet.

Mr. Stott and I connected through the New York surfer grapevine. Following his bread-crumb trail of texts, I found a narrow lane through a clutch of barns and farmhouses to a cove. It was a near windless afternoon, with head-high waves breaking over a smooth limestone ledge. On my scale it was excellent. For Mr. Stott it was an average practice day, so he surfed his tiny board with the fins removed for an additional challenge.

In the lineup with us was only one other surfer, Paul O’Kane, an Australian who’d come to Ireland 20 years ago for his honeymoon and, like so many others, stayed. Starved for it, I stayed in for hours. A contingent of friendly locals rotated through. Ireland is so far north that when I quit it was close to 10 p.m. the sun still just above the horizon. We had dinner, slept right there, and went at it again the next morning.

The swell lasted four more days. Between shifts in the wind and downpours we got our fill on that north coast. We moved our camp to near the ruins of the thousand year-old Rosslea Castle on a grassy bluff overlooking the two main breaks at Easkey, our only company a family of Germans who’d ferried over in their own van.

In quaint little Easkey village we joined the locals at McGowan’s pub for a Guinness, and ate nearby at Pudding Row, a hip little award-winning restaurant and bakery provisioned from local farms.

On the last morning, camping at a beach an hour from Shannon airport, I rose in the predawn to catch a few fading rollers. Alone, with my pick of fun, glassy waves, not another soul in sight, amid miles of beach and dunes, it felt like a throwback to another time when surfing was in its infancy. Surfing in Ireland can feel that way.