NEED TO KNOW
A surfer who dedicated his life to riding the ocean’s waves every day for more than four decades has died.
Dale Webster was 76 years old, according to SFGate, The New York Times, and Surfer magazine.
Webster, a Northern California native, was a “fixture at Sonoma County beaches” over the last 40 years, according to SFGate.
Webster has held the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days surfed since 2003 when he broke the mark at 10,100 days, according to the outlet. Surfer profiled Webster when his streak ended in 2015 at 14,642 days in a row when he was 66 years old and needed to get surgery to remove a kidney stone.
“He was a surfer, that was his main thing, that was his life ambition. I don’t think he ever second-guessed it,” close friend William Beal told SFGate this week. “I know he had a lot of good years here when it was not that crowded. I think he had a pretty well-lived life.”
Nicknamed “The Daily Wavester,” Webster was born in North Carolina in 1948 and began surfing in 1961, according to Surfer. Infatuated with the sport, Webster moved to Sonoma County in 1973 and began surfing every day in 1975 during a storm swell off the California coast.
“I surfed every day during the swell,” Webster told the magazine in 2015 when his 40-year streak ended. “Each day, the waves got better and better. After surfing 85 days straight, my friend said, ‘You should try to surf for 100 consecutive days.’ When I got to 100, the story was in the local newspaper. That publicity gave me a little pat on the back to make it to a year. So then the challenge became a year. And so forth.”
Webster told the magazine he surfed a “confirmed” 43,923 waves over his 40-year streak, which continued each winter despite water temperatures dropping into the 40s every year.
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Out of the water, the Times reported that Webster worked as a janitor at a local school.
In recent years, Webster’s health took a turn for the worse, Beal told SFGate – although he and Webster’s daughter did not reveal what caused the surfing icon’s death, according to the local news site.
Tributes from the surfing community have poured in, as fellow surfers and fans of the sport pay homage to the legendary surfer, who is perhaps the most dedicated of all time.
“I never heard him say, ‘Oh man, I wish I hadn’t done this, I wish I hadn’t gotten caught up in this,’ ” Beal told SFGate. “I think he was very proud of his accomplishment.”
