In the history of the sport, there are few who have matched Dale Webster’s dedication to surfing. Known as “Daily Wavester” or “Everyday Dale,” he lived his life with a singular purpose: to maintain the longest streak of consecutive days surfed – a feat for which he holds a Guinness World Record. According to multiple reports on social media, Webster has passed away. No cause of death was given for the king of consistency, who was 77.
“The surfing world has lost quite a character,” wrote Billy “Blaze” Beal on the Instagram account for his shaping business Surfboards by Blaze. “Dale Webster, a guy who surfed over 14,000 days in a row, has passed on to that big point break in the sky. Dale really was one of a kind, and it’s hard to even fathom in the slightest bit what it must have taken to have a streak as long as he did. To not get injured, or sick, or have any kind of situation that stopped you from surfing. It’s truly an amazing accomplishment.”
Webster was born and raised in Alhambra, California and started surfing in 1961 at the age of 13. In 1973 he moved to Bodega Bay, located about 70 miles north of San Francisco. Dale’s monumental streak started on September 2, 1975, when Bodega Bay saw a week straight of 15-foot surf kicked up by the “Monster From New Zealand” swell. “I surfed all seven days,” he told the New York Times, “and then I thought, ‘Let me see if I can keep this going.’”
And keep it going he did. Initially, the goal was to surf until February 2004, when the days of the week would fall on the same calendar dates as they did in 1976. However, he would end up far surpassing that goal.
In order to accomplish that, Dale built his entire life around the pursuit. He never took a vacation inland, quit jobs when they interfered with his surf sessions, and paddled out rain or shine, in sickness or in health. “I think of all the things I’ll have missed in life because of this,” he told the New York Times. “The only thing I’ll have is the memory of riding all those waves. When I’m out there watching the seals and sea lions, and 30-inch salmon jumping, and I have all those waves to myself, it’s like my own personal Disneyland.”
The streak went on until October 5, 2015, when he missed a day due to a kidney stone operation. The final tally came out to 14,641 days of consecutive surfing over the course of 40 years.
“It started off as a streak, went into a quest, and now it’s some sort of a mission,” Webster told filmmaker Dana Brown, in the surf documentary Step into Liquid. “I don’t really know what the mission is, but the only worthwhile thing in life is to ride it ‘til the end and try to find out the meaning of it all.”
We’ll never know if he found the meaning of life, but there is no question that Dale rode it out until the end.
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