🏄‍♀️ Surfline forecasts suck—now what? 🤨

👋 Happy Anniversary! Did you know it’s been a year since we sent out “a sneak peek at The Wipeout Weekly”? Whaaaat. A year?!

No better way to celebrate than to just keep going. We give you: the All Things Surf Directory. It’s live! It’s getting bigger every week! It’s #1 on Google! 😂 And how we use it—well, that’s completely up to us.

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• Surfline sucks—now what? 🤨

• You can’t afford a “Hawaiian Surfboard”

• All Things Surf Directory won't change the way you surf, but… 😜

• Stumbling into surfing at 39 🏄🏻‍♀️

• Don't listen to this if you rent a wetsuit 🤢

• “No sharks” surf news roundup 🗞️

^SURFODRAMA

😱 Surfline forecasts suck—now what? 🤨

Surfline sucks. Surf-lies. Bring back Magicseaweed! How much?!

We surfers feel very strongly about this number one surf forecasting app. Yet, it perseveres.

But is it, perhaps, just about time for Surfline to be over?

Not yet. Even though, apparently, it got worse.

Surfline has been around since the 1990s. If you surf, you most likely use it. It gives you swell and surf height, the time interval between waves, tide, wind, wave energy, and more.

I have been a Premium user for years, and I forgot how simplified and unhelpful the free option actually is—for beginners, or for tracking the forecast during a specific day. The interface is designed to infuriate you into upgrading.

The upgrade would still be worth a pretty penny if only, you guessed it, Surfline got it right.

📉 The accuracy problem
Throughout the years, surfers have complained about the app and the inaccuracy of its forecasts.

For some, Surfline overestimates wave height. For others—it undercalls it.

They lament the loss of human observers and checkers. They complain about Surfline getting fundamental data wrong, even buoy data such as water temperature.

We get it. Surf forecasting is hard. The ocean is a layered, chaotic system driven by wind thousands of miles away, underwater bathymetry that shifts over time, tides, sandbars, local wind quirks, and micro-geography. But, but, but…

🎯 The illusion of precision
Most surfers don’t read swell charts first. We look at one thing and one thing only: wave height and conditions.

Surfline assigns a size and a rating to breaks around the world, packaging complexity into digestible, pretty numbers and colors. It feels precise. It feels personalized. It feels right.

But increasingly, it’s not.

🤖 LOTUS, AI, and averaging the ocean
Since Surfline integrated its AI-driven LOTUS model, forecasts at many breaks have become wildly inconsistent.

Traditional forecasting blends physics-based models (how swells move through space) with local observation and interpretation. AI-heavy models, if over-reliant on historical pattern recognition, can average out reality instead of capturing what’s happening right now.

Alexander R. Stine, a professor of earth and planetary science at San Francisco State University, criticized the shift toward purely AI models:

“You are throwing away everything we know about physics when you do that,” he said. “There’s quite a bit of data cooked into the fact that we know the equations of motion… You’d probably do better with just actually doing the calculation.”

And the ocean doesn’t like being averaged.

🗺️ Local still matters
Another recurring complaint: Surfline presents regional data as if it’s hyper-local. Two spots separated by a headland can behave completely differently under the same swell and wind conditions. A sheltered cove may be clean. A nearby exposed beach may be blown out.

Local knowledge still matters. But, as we all know, humans cost more than robots.

🔍 Where’s the transparency?
Adding insult to injury, there’s little transparency. Forecast wrong? There’s no historical comparison tool showing what was predicted versus what actually happened.

If you’re lucky enough to live close to the beach, you can check before you surf. Or there’s a cam pointed at your local spot and you’re a paid user—happy days.

But if you have to travel hours to a surf spot or you’re planning a trip in advance, you may get discouraged by the sleek interface, AI-powered cams, color updates, and increasing reliance on automation.

It starts to feel less like a surf forecasting service and more like a tech company optimizing for scale and efficiency. And it’s hard not to notice.

🧨 But what can we do?
Surfline took out its main competitors—Magicseaweed in the UK and Coastalwatch in Australia—a few years ago.

But new surf forecasting apps have started popping up. If they can learn from Surfline’s mistakes, we may finally get some genuine alternatives.

Here’s what surfers are using instead today:
Surf Captain (81 reviews on the App Store)
Windy (75k reviews on the App Store)
Surf-forecast.com (760 reviews on the App Store)

And there are new global apps being built:
Swellify from New Zealand—focus: beginner-friendly
Swell Scope from Australia—focus: surf journal

Are these apps better than Surfline? Probably. Possibly not. But we know that a little competition can work wonders.

Good luck to us all!

^{SURF THRU HISTORY}

🤑 You can’t afford a “Hawaiian Surfboard”

As I’ve been ordering some second-hand surfing books, I came across a listing so ridiculously expensive that I felt we needed to talk about it. Namely: Hawaiian Surfboard.

The listing I spotted was for a $15,000 first-print edition of Hawaiian Surfboard by Tom Blake.

It is signed by Tom Blake and inscribed in the year of publication: “with sincere appreciation of a master craftsman, from Tom Blake 1935.”

You may be forgiven for thinking the price is driven by the book’s total one-in-existence uniqueness—but there’s another first-edition listing at $12,500. It’s also signed by Tom Blake. It’s like he couldn’t stop himself from signing these books.

💰 Why is it so expensive?
Okay—but why so much money? What’s with this book?

Two things. First—the author. Tom Blake is widely considered one of the most influential surfers in the history of the sport. He invented the surfboard fin, the hollow surfboard, and a water-resistant camera housing for surf photography—and he was the first person to surf Malibu.

Second—the book itself. It’s considered “the most important publication in the surfing canon,” according to Timothy DeLaVega, and described by The Surfer’s Journal as a “seminal volume of surf literature [and] the sport’s single most important document.”

🦄 What makes the book special
The book is ninety-five pages long and was written by Blake in 1935. Only 500 copies were printed at the time.

Before Hawaiian Surfboard, there were surf articles and essays—but not a proper standalone book. According to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, it’s “part surf history and part instruction manual.”

Hawaiian Surfboard was illustrated with nearly 50 black-and-white photos, most taken by Blake, and Duke Kahanamoku wrote the introduction. The book is divided into four sections: “Ancient Hawaiian Legends of Surfriding,” “Early Hawaiian Historical Period, Surfriding,” “Modern Surfriding,” and “How to Use the New Hollow Surfboard.”

According to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, “Blake’s prose is dry, often clumsy, and occasionally pedantic, but he does convey the power and beauty of surfing in Hawaii.”

It sounds like this:

“The water is so warm one is not conscious of it. The view of the palm trees on shore, the [Waikik’i] hotels, the mountains and clouds is marvelous and to me it is part of the pleasure of surfing. The hour before sunset is best of all, for then the mountains take on all the shades of green imaginable, while the clouds near them assume all shades of white and gray. Rainbows are often seen in the far-off valleys.”

In 1983, the book was reissued as Hawaiian Surfriders 1935. You can buy used copies on Amazon for under $800.

^{WILLY WONKA’S FACTORY OF SURF STUFFS}

🍫 All Things Surf Directory won’t change the way you surf, but…

When we set the rule of no promos ever of any kind whatsoever as one of the guiding principles for Girls Who Can’t Surf Good on Facebook—which now stands at close to 86,000 members—we just wanted to keep the group noise-free.

But community recommendations, well, they are everything.

That’s the very reason we built the All Things Surf Directory.

It’s a curated, location-based hub for surf stuffs and community listings worldwide. And we’re officially announcing it today. Finally. Enough pussyfooting.

No more missing a recommendation because you missed a post.

Never again will you need to ask a question that was already asked 400 times.

No longer do you need to join the group to benefit from its shared knowledge.

🚀 Surf’s the limit
Adding a listing is free. Using the directory is free. That part is simple. We’ve split the directory into three big wave categories.

Surf Listings are for any surf or surf-adjacent business—coaches, shops, photographers, rentals, shapers, wellness providers, surf non-profits, jobs, volunteer opportunities, and community listings in Classifieds.

The Classifieds category is for all your second-hand boards and wetsuit sales, swaps or giveaways, surf trip or ride sharing, last-minute borrow requests when traveling, lost & found…

Surf Retreats & Events are for events and experiences that take place on specific dates. Surf film festivals. Beach cleanups. Local beginner meetups.

Surf-Side Lodging is for businesses or individuals offering accommodation near surf spots.

💡 Need some examples?
Struggling with your pop-up? There's an online workshop for that.

If you live in New York and have kids who want to learn to surf, it’s free.

Learning to surf and need surf buddies? There’s a meetup group for beginner and intermediate surfers in North Wales, UK.

Or you can meet up with fellow surfer girls on Redondo Beach, California in a couple of weeks.

Worried about your head? Here’s a discount code: CANTSURF15 for your surf helmet.

Looking for a surf retreat? There are upcoming ones in Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Nicaragua, South Africa, Portugal, Spain, Canary Islands, Lombok, Siargao, Australia….

The possibilities are… you know… endless. And we’re only starting out.

^{GIRL WHO TURNED HER LIFE UPSIDE DOWN FOR SURF}

🏄🏻‍♀️ When stumbling into surfing at 39 changes everything

We all know that surfing makes people do crazy things.

Learning to surf later in life can make people do absolutely insane stuff like chucking your job, moving to another country, and starting from scratch…

If you needed some inspiration or perhaps reassurance that all will be well, we recommend Suzanne's story.

👉 Read the full story

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY PODCAST}

🎙️ Don’t listen to this if you rent a wetsuit 🤢

We haven’t done many—read: any—pod interviews where we almost literally peed ourselves with laughter. Until we spoke to Lou Harris of the Black Surfing Association (East Coast), that is.

We chatted about surfing in Rockaway, New York lineup vibes, what makes it easier for kids (and adults) to learn to surf, and why you should think very, very hard about using a rental wetsuit.

🎧 Listen to The Wipeout Weekly on your fav pod platform or right here.

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ Surfing dachshund. Angry pros. Surfers rescued.

🐶 Surfing dachshund rides wave in viral TikTok
A dachshund in Australia has gone viral after a TikTok video showed the small dog calmly balancing on a surfboard, with the clip—reportedly practiced first in the owner’s pool—reaching 11 million views and counting.

🏅 Olympic surf qualification changes criticized by tour surfers
World champion Yago Dora and other elite surfers have criticized the ISA’s revised qualification system for LA28, which reduces Championship Tour spots from 20 to 10 and limits tour qualifiers to one man and one woman per country.

🚁 Two surfers rescued after rip current in Oregon
Two surfers were rescued at Cape Kiwanda Beach after being caught in a rip current, with firefighters using a rappel system to reach one stranded near a cliff as both declined medical treatment.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

_{The Wipeout Weekly—our home and digital magazine.
The Wee Surf Shoppe—explore useful, cute, and sometimes simply outrageous surf “stuffs”.
The Wipeout Weekly podcast—daily surf stories and weekly* guests.
All Things Surf Directory—surf retreats, learn to surf, classifieds, surf-side lodging, you name it.
Girls Who Can’t Surf Good—an 86k-member-strong private group on Facebook.}
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⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
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