2018 Year in Review
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...
IMG_2266 feb26thSS
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.
