Raglan surf history: Manu Bay beyond the film
Compiled by Surf Haunts · Updated 2026-09-21
Manu Bay is one of the places people mean when they talk about surfing at Raglan. The bay sits along the Whāingaroa / Raglan coast in Waikato, with dark shoreline rocks and green hills behind the water. It has a film connection, but there's more than one bay to keep track of.
Three names along the coast
Waikato Regional Council's surf-break report places Manu Bay innermost among Raglan's three nationally significant left-hand point breaks. The other two are Whale Bay and Indicators.
Those names help make sense of photographs and older accounts. Raglan is the wider place; Manu Bay identifies this particular part of its surf coast. A picture labelled simply “Raglan” may show a different beach or bay.
The Endless Summer connection
Manu Bay featured in the 1966 surf film The Endless Summer, a connection recorded by Waikato's regional tourism organisation. That gives the bay a place in the history of surf films as well as in the landscape.
If you've seen the film, it's something concrete to look for when you return to that sequence: the point, the water beside it and the shape of the land. The film date is a release date, not a claim that surfing at Raglan began that year.
A place in coastal policy
The New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 names Manu Bay, Whale Bay and Indicators separately in its list of nationally significant surf breaks.
That list is useful when reading about the coast: it treats the breaks as identifiable places in their own right. It doesn't mean the three names can be swapped around, or that a long ride shown in a film tells you what the water will be doing on another day.
Got an older view of Manu Bay?
We're interested in dated photographs, memories of early boards and corrections to the details above. Email us if you have something to add. We'll ask before publishing it and agree how you would like to be credited.
Our Manu Bay print
The photograph looks west towards Manu Bay from farther along the coast. Our Raglan print is an illustrated composition following a pale coastal edge, dark boulders and layered hills. Its curved path is an artistic interpretation, not a surveyed route.
Compiled from public historical sources and fact-checked against them at the time of writing – not a first-hand or local account. Corrections and memories are welcome; we verify before publishing anything sent in.