After competing on the 2022 European QS, Barnaby Cox packed up and left the tour behind. No plan beyond wanting to go places he'd always talked about and surf waves he'd only seen in clips.
Indonesia came first. Cox had grown up watching Reubyn Ash edits, and the advice had stuck. "If you wanna get good at surfing, just go to Indo," Ash had told him. He arrived in Bali in December 2023 and spent three months working through Bali, Nusa Lembongan, Lombok and Sumbawa, getting sunburnt and razzing around on mopeds. Sumbawa was the highlight, with Ash and his dad making the trip out alongside friends from home. "We had such a great time," Cox says, with the kind of understatement that tends to follow the best trips.
From there, a coaching job came up at Kandooma in the Maldives. He took it, stayed nearly two years. "It was such a trip getting to the island and realising, this is my work now." He loved the coaching side, reading waves for guests, pointing out the good ones, trying to help people have the trip of a lifetime. "It wasn't always perfect, but I look back pretty stoked on the whole experience."
During the Maldives off-season he flew to Durban and spent six weeks volunteering with Surfers Not Street Children. Cox grew up in Cornwall where nobody locked the doors at night. In Durban he didn't go outside after dark. "I heard gunshots at night, driving around seeing people super high on the streets, sketchy people and young kids growing up amongst it. I hadn't really understood my privilege before that." The programme works across the whole picture, getting kids into schools, feeding them, doing social work with their families, finding safe housing, and surfing every afternoon after school. "If I had spare money I'd definitely donate it to them."
The film itself almost didn't happen. Most of the footage sat on a hard drive because Cox wasn't competing and had no reason to post anything. When he finally looked back through it, he was surprised by what was there. "I was actually so stoked on it. I wanted to make something out of it because I was proud of it and wanted something to look back on, rather than doing it for views or sponsors or anything like that." Rob Blackett edited it, sifting through gigs and gigs of clips to get it to where it needed to be.
The film's title comes from that last stretch. Iyye is yesterday in Dhivehi, one of the few words Cox picked up during his time there. Cox is 25 now, back home in Cornwall, running his own surf coaching business at barnabysurf.com.
