Did you surf 432 times in 2015?

How was your 2015? Filled with excitement, regret, remorse? Did you speak about hating work and longing for surf? Probably, we all do it and put it on repeat. Amongst us are those who surf a lot, a little, and the occasional pal who savours the idea of surfing, purchases multiple sleds and suits throughout the year and each time you invite them for a friendly session they decline sighting some thin excuse. Friends that leave you questioning if they like to surf or if they just enjoy the notion of being a surfer.

Ted locked in a rare pocket in Los Angeles.

Ted Robinson’s not that friend, he’s a man who’ll make you feel guilty about the amount of time you spend in the water. Mr Robinson tracks all of his sessions with a nifty little Ripcurl GPS watch, well almost all of his sessions. “The only time I don’t use it is when I’m doing step-offs in Mex,” Ted tells Stab. “Which can give an inaccurate reading of how often I surf. Pretty much anytime it’s going to be overhead I take out my ski and do step-offs, it’s just too addicting. That’s a lifesaver for me, it gets too crazy around here sometimes.” He’s referring to Orange County. Ted’s a Huntington Beach guy. He frequents HB and Newport then shoots down to his pad in Baja when things get a little too hectic. “If you saw my set-up down there you’d understand why I spend so much of my time in Mex.”

It’s so nice, I wanna have the same view twice.

“I would have surfed more this year if the waves had been better.” Ted says. The guy’s had 432 sessions over the grand year of 2015. He’s spent a total of 21 days this year atop foam submerged in salt water. It’s unimaginable how much he’d surf is the waves were always firing, going through his statistics it isn’t rare for Mr Robinson here to surf three times a day and spend over three hours in the water. “I take pride in the amount of time I spend in the water and how many waves I catch,” he continues, “it’s interesting to me to track as many sessions as possible.” On January 20th, 2015, Ted had a marathon four hour session out at El Porto in Los Angeles, and if you’re familiar with the break then you’re aware it had to have been just kicking that day to keep any sane individual out there that long. It seems like it was, Ted caught 70 waves that sesh, he paddled 10.3 miles, his top speed was 17.1 mph with a longest wave of 176 yards.

Tube hounding in Baja.

Ted has a group of friends who all have the watch and have a club set up on the app, “there’s a dozen of us,” he says. “It’s cool we get competitive, it’s more for bragging rights. Who’s gone the fastest. Who spends the most time in the water. That’s what everyone cares about. Sometimes guys forget to turn their watches off and get in the car, next thing you know they’re hitting a 3 mile waves at 60 mph… So we try to keep each other honest.”