Not much to say here. I blew it. I passed on so many days to surf in 2018. It was a difficult year. Storms and floods had me evacuated. Work backup and stresses of life got the best of me on a lot of weekends. But to be fair, I also didn't wear the watch for more than a dozen sessions. I'd say my actual wave count was more in the upper 200's to low 300's range. The best year for surf stats was without a doubt 2015 where the watch counted 411 rides, with an actual number near 500 when factoring in the BS.
I did manage quite a few 100yd+ rides this year... I call them touchdowns. So hopefully that trend continues. I'd rather ride waves farther and catch less, than pull out early just to save myself a paddle. Staying in shape in my mid-40's requires that I maximize my surfing workouts in order to avoid some stupid gym membership. But I need to get in the water more often.
February and July were my best months for surfing in 2018. I was in Costa Rica for most of July, so it's a given I'd catch a bunch of rides. But February is a different beast. Usually cold and uninviting, but this year it was quite the opposite. While it wasn't summer weather, we did get temps in the 60's a few times during my break from school and I surfed in my 4MM wetsuit with snow still melting on the ground from the day before. On February 26th, I had a really fun session scoring four rides in the 100yd range and shoulder high clean surf with nobody out, pic and stats in the gallery below...
It's always been my goal to get 500 waves on the watch in a calendar year. Maybe 2019 is the year? The Rip Curl GPS watch is still ticking, to use a corny pun. My watch is the original release series and is probably far inferior to the latest version... but I'm not buying another surf-tracking watch until this one stops working. I might even go Apple watch at that point and use the Sessions App, we'll see. But the surf-tracking watch definitely pushes me to surf more and stay out for longer. So I'm glad I've used it the last four years. It was a decent investment. I'm going to do a full review of the Rip Curl GPS watch next month, so stay tuned for that, if you're curious about purchasing one yourself.