🏄‍♀️ Surf your tush off, stay productive 🤑

👋 Happy National Just Because Day! If this is not permission to head out for an unscheduled surf sesh, we don’t know what is.

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• Surf your tush off, stay productive 🤑

• Linda Benson was first at everything 👑

• Once a surf star, always a surf star 🌟

• Sunrise surfs are the prettiest surfs 🌅

• From New Zealand to Fuerteventura 🇪🇸

• Surf news roundup 🗞️

^SURFODRAMA

🏄🏻‍♀️ Surf your tush off, stay productive 🤑

A few weeks ago, we posed a question: can you surf and hold a job?

What we meant, of course, was: can you surf regularly, not just on weekends, and remain productive enough to keep the job that supports your surfing habit?

The advice on how to achieve this close-to-unachievable feat rolled in. And it turned out the answer was yes. It can be done.

Here's what works.

⏰ The dawn patrol formula
The most common answer is, of course, get up before the sun.

• Wake at 5am (some do 4am if they have a longer drive)

• Choose your closest break only, no chasing

• Cap the session at 60 to 90 minutes

• Be at your desk by 8:30 or 9

One member's trick: she sets a "busy" block on her calendar every day from 9 to 10 so coworkers can't book meetings.

Or, shock horror, surf after work. This may not be the performance peak you're dreaming of, but as one member swears by this formula: "After work we are tired and grouchy, but jumping into the cold salty water and getting tossed around sounds refreshing. After that we can just shower, eat, and pass out."

🍞 The tip that fixed the "wrecked afterwards" problem
Eat before you surf, they say.

One member wrote: "I used to surf before work and always felt wrecked. Then I started eating first and I no longer feel destroyed the rest of the day."

If you've been getting up, going out on an empty stomach, and coming home to collapse, this may be just the fix. Bread, toast, banana, protein bar. Whatever works for you.

There are also surfers who swear by vitamins. And those who swear by sleeping well. The pattern appears to be: refuel and recover, and the "wrecked" phase goes away.

🩺 The job types that actually make this easy
The most surf-friendly jobs came up more than once, and they're worth naming.

Nursing. Multiple nurses said 12-hour shifts at 0.8 (four days a week) give them "heaps of time off." Another does 8-hour shifts, 8 or 9 shifts a fortnight, and calls the balance ideal.

Teaching. School holidays are the obvious win, but the daily 3pm finish helps too. One member with 31 years in teaching noted September is the hardest month.

Remote work with shifted hours. One member does her 8-to-5 as a 10-to-7 remotely and surfs every morning.

Rotating shifts. A member with a rotating schedule gets to the beach midweek even though it's a three-hour drive.

Teaching English as a second language abroad. One member's 20s were a 2pm-to-9pm shift in surf-friendly countries, which meant five sessions a week and a whole life organized around waves.

Freelance plus part-time combo. One apparently superhuman member combines a full-time job, freelance work and part-time work, and still fits in one or two sessions a week.

🧠 The productivity paradox
As part of this exercise, I used myself as a test subject and surfed every working day for a week while keeping an eye on my “work output.”

I surfed for an hour every day. Well, one day I surfed so hard for 30 minutes that the bottom of my Wavestorm came off. But I made up for it by surfing two hours the very next day.

I work with a team in Europe, so I had to surf around my meetings, which happen during the dawn patrol hours. The wind picked up slightly, but I was usually back home by 10am.

I admit I didn't eat before I went out, but I drank a lot of water.

My productivity didn't suffer one iota. But neither did I feel that surfing increased my brain clarity, improved my problem-solving skills or magically made me better at work.

👎 The bad stuff
I don't think when I surf. My mind goes blank. It's refreshing.

But the week when I tried to prove that I can surf every day and still do my job, I was thinking about my work in the surf constantly. And I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

All this experience taught me is that yes, it can be done, but for some of us it may not work out the way we hoped.

I think I'd rather be like Laura of The Surf Societe: "Oh my problem is the opposite. I keep thinking about surf when I'm working. It is fun. But it is absolutely not productive."

^{SURF THROUGH HISTORY}

👑 Linda Benson was first at everything

Hand up. And I am so embarrassed. I was unaware of Linda Benson's existence until last year when Matt Warshaw mentioned her on our podcast.

A legend. This "hot-dogger of the women." This "godmother of female surfing." Let's fix my ignorance.

🌊 The firsts
Linda Benson was born in Encinitas in 1944 and started surfing at 11. A few years later, she had already won the very first major California contest open to everyone, won the Makaha International at 15 on her first-ever trip to Hawai’i, and become the first woman to ride Waimea Bay in post-contact Hawaiian history just days later.

Linda would go on to win the first U.S. Championship at Huntington Beach, in 1959, and continued to hold her title in 1960, '61, '64 and '68. She set the record for number of wins by a woman at that event.

In 1963, she became the first woman ever to appear on the cover of a surf magazine (Surf Guide, coverline: "Linda Benson: World's Greatest!"). She had the first women's signature model skateboard from Hansen Surfboards, which she demoed on hardware store sidewalks up and down the California coast. She was the surfing stunt double for Deborah Walley in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, and for Annette Funicello in Muscle Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo.

How many firsts is that? Five. And this is not all.

🎤 Linda at 19
In November 1963, Surf Guide magazine published a cover story by Bill Cleary titled Linda Benson, World's Greatest!. She was 19. Some of what she said in that interview is hard to hear today.

On whether girls could ever be as good as boys: "Women are capable of doing a lot of things that tradition tells them not to. But I do think they should back off most of the time. A man is a man and he wants to feel like a man. Men are stronger and they're supposed to be able to do things girls can't. Girls will never be as good as male surfers; some girls are better than a lot of boys, but the best girls could never compete with the best men."

On paddling contests, which she considered "unfeminine": "I think my shoulders are big enough as they are."

But also, on winning that first Huntington contest without ever having competed before: "I entered and won it. I really love surfing contests, but I don't enter to show off. I don't care who knows whether I'm good or not."

On her Waimea day: "I might have taken off in the peak more, but I didn't want to get in the way. For example, I wouldn't take off in front of Buzzy Trent or any of the older guys. I respect them a little more."

She was 19 years old, one of the best surfers in the world, and describing her own performance in terms of not wanting to inconvenience anyone. Sound familiar? Well, the latter part does.

At the end of the interview, asked about her future, she said: "I'll probably become an airline hostess."

✈️ The 38-year detour
In 1965, at 21, Linda applied to be a flight attendant for United Airlines. It was the most glamorous job a young American woman could aspire to. She got it. She kept it for 38 years.

She flew the trans-Pacific routes: Hawai’i, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, back through Hawai’i. She worked 12 days a month. She kept a surfboard in the beach boys' board locker at Kuhio in Waikīkī, right next to Rabbit Kekai's. She would fly in at four in the afternoon, be in the water by 4:30, and surf until she could hear the Tahitian drums start up for the evening luau at the hotels.

Linda kept entering contests occasionally. In 1968, at 24, she won her fifth US Championship title, forcing a one-on-one duel against Joyce Hoffman to decide who would represent the US at that year's World Contest in Puerto Rico. She won the spot. Neither of them won the title (that went to a 15-year-old named Margo Godfrey).

And then Linda's name, along with her record of more than 20 first-place finishes over a decade, began fading into the annals of surf history.

In a 1995 interview with Wahine magazine, Linda said she had battled with "alcohol and other substances," but that she had been sober since 1977.

She started riding waves again in 1979 and that’s where our story continues.

👉 Keep on reading

Big thanks to Matt Warshaw for keeping these stories alive in the Encyclopedia of Surfing.

^{VID OF THE WEEK}

🌟 Once a surf star, always a surf star

And if you needed more proof that Linda Benson is a total GOAT, here she is shredding in relatively recent history.

You can find her @lindabenson.surfher

And while you’re at it, give @girlswhocantsurfgood a follow.

^{PIC OF THE WEEK}

🌅 Sunrise surfs are the prettiest surfs

This is just a little sunrise hug from our own Cynthia @cynthia.sandiego to you.

“If life feels heavy right now, you’re absolutely not alone and you don’t have to fix it today. You don’t have to be productive through it. You don’t have to have the perfect perspective or plan. Maybe you can just give yourself a little room to breathe. To sit. To feel. To observe. To be. To rest when you need to. To pause for the sunrise.”

👉 Read Cynthia’s story

^{LATEST FROM GIRLS WHO CAN’T SURF GOOD}

💬 3 things we’re figuring out this week

🌴 Where to base for a month of remote work plus surf as a total beginner, after a great intro trip to El Salvador? Community top picks: K Lodge right next to K59/61 in El Salvador (a member said owner Walter is super cool, food is good, no-frills surf-focused spot), Pavones in Costa Rica (a member has a jungle house ten minutes from the wave), Mexico if you're on West Coast time (Chacahua for vibe if remote work isn't essential, Punta Mita for a pile of breaks near Puerto Vallarta and Sayulita, Mazatlan for reliable internet and enough breaks with less hurricane risk, and Barra de Navidad as a cool town with solid surf shops), Cabarete in the Dominican Republic, and Waikiki if you want something more established.

🇳🇿 Working holiday visa in New Zealand starting October, want to surf daily and might base near Dunedin? Community top picks: Dunedin proper (St Clair is the famous busy one, but Aramoana, Blackrock, and the spots north of town are locals' favorites), Toko Mouth an hour south of Dunedin, the Catlins for remote spots, dolphins, and DOC campsites (Purakaunui Bay, Curio Bay, Cannibal Bay), Riverton for beginner-friendly longboarding with dolphins if you're lucky, and save Raglan for the fall or winter later in your visa when you head north. Wetsuit consensus for South Island year-round: 4/3, add hood and booties from April through September.

🏝️ Solo trip to Fuerteventura for a week in January, looking for surf houses and spot intel? Community top picks: Coco Surfhouse in Corralejo (multiple endorsements), Homegrown Surf hostel (drives you to the best spots each day with video analysis included), Amanay Surf School if you want lessons and accommodation together, and La Wave Surf Canaries as a small hut on Playa Blanca for board and wetsuit rentals reachable by bus. Local intel: if you're surfing solo, go north to Corralejo because you have multiple spots as backup when one isn't working, and La Pared has one really good locally owned clifftop coffee bar for the wind-blown days.

👉 Join us for more recs, chatter, and support

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ A neurosurgeon wants surfers to talk about helmets. A 19-year-old scored the wave of the year in Fiji. A 1976 pioneer got her flowers at Duke's.

🧠 A neurosurgeon at Folly Beach wants surfers to think about helmets
An MUSC neurosurgery resident and lifelong surfer co-authored a review of 25 surf-injury studies covering 72,000 patients and is now trying to get manufacturers to design a helmet specifically for surfing.

🏆 Erin Brooks scores a perfect 10 in her opening heat at the Fiji Pro
Nineteen-year-old Canadian Erin Brooks scored a perfect 10 in her opening heat at Cloudbreak, an 18-point heat total that Surfer Magazine is calling potentially the wave of the year on the women's Championship Tour.

🏅 Becky Benson Jay honored at Duke's OceanFest
Benson Jay, one of only six women who competed on the very first women's professional world tour in 1976, was honored this year at Duke's OceanFest in Waikīkī for her role in shaping women's surfing.

👁️ Jamie O'Brien is off the water for six months after pterygium surgery
The pro surfer had surgery for "Surfer's Eye," a benign growth associated with prolonged exposure to UV light, wind, dust and dry conditions, and is out of the water for at least six months. Make sure you don’t get it!

🧡 A Jersey Surfboard Club volunteer up for a BBC Make a Difference Award
Michelle Dawson has been running the Jersey Surfboard Club Academy at St Ouen's Bay for over ten years and is nominated for a BBC Radio Jersey award for getting hundreds of local kids into surfing.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

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⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
If a friend forwarded this and you liked it, hit subscribe & join us! We will see you all next week! 🌊

With stoke,

Zuz & The Wipeout Weekly