photo credit: Courtesy of the New York Times/Darcy Padilla
This New York Times photo from 2000 shows Dale Webster at Salmon Beach in Bodega.

Dale Webster, longtime Sonoma County resident, and world record holder for the most consecutive days surfed in a row, has died at the age of 76.

Nicknamed the "Daily Wavester", Webster surfed every day for 40 years, one month, and one day straight; 14,641 days in a row.

Local board shaper William Beal is a long time friend of Webster.

"He was quite a character," Beal said. "Like I've probably known him almost 40 years, and I've been surfing out here since the 80s, and he was already a well-established fixture when I started."

"He was a real quiet, kind of mellow guy. Not a big talker talker, you know, not a loud talker and nothing like that," Beal said.

"Just kind of a mellow, easy-going kind of guy who was just obsessed with surfing."

Webster's record-setting surf streak began in September 1975. At a time when surfers were few and far between in the cold Sonoma Coast waters. Beal said the streak started with a week straight of surf days and just snowballed.

"One of the stories I always heard was that he he looked at his tide book and realized that tide books run on a basically on a lunar schedule where, I think that's 28 years, where in 28 years the tide book that you have now will be good again," Beal said. "The numbers will all be the same, and so then that became the goal was to surf the full lunar cycle of 28 years. And then I think when he accomplished that feat, he just decided to keep going."

After surfing that supposed lunar cycle, the cycle reported to have been a misinterpretation on Webster's part, Beal said there was seemingly nothing that could keep Webster from the water.

Not work, car crashes, family matters, or health problems.

"You know, when he finally stopped, it was because he had to get a surgery," Beal said. "I think he suffered for a long time before he even got to that point. Like he just kept putting it off and putting it off and then finally it just became to the point where it was on him, you know unavoidable, and he had already broken the record."

"He had already been in the Guinness Book of World's Records at that point, so it was kind of okay to stop, I guess," Beal said.

Webster's legendary surfing streak ended in 2015 when he underwent surgery for kidney issues.

"I do remember asking him one time, he was over here at my shaping bay, and when we were talking and I asked him, I said I said you must be really relieved to not have to get up and surf now," Beal said. "You know what I mean? It must be just a strange situation to be in after having done something every day for so long."

"He just kind of giggled and acknowledged that yeah, he felt a bit of a I wouldn't say relief, but just awareness of the difference of the situation that he was in now."

Beal said Webster surfed all over the coast depending on how big, and from what direction the swells came in, but like most of Sonoma County's surfers, Salmon Creek was his most frequented break.

"He used to have his parking spot at Salmon Creek," Beal said. "Every morning he'd come and park in that first parking spot at Salmon [Creek] and then he'd check the surf, and surf, and if you parked in that spot when he got out there, he'd yell at you because you were parking in his parking spot."

"That tells you how uncrowded it was back then," Beal said through a chuckle. "This is late 80s, you know, and so literally at that point, I knew every single person that surfed. Every single person that surfed knew every other single person that surfed."

"There was probably only maybe 30 or 40 people that even surfed the whole Sonoma Coast. So everybody knew Dale's spot, nobody parked in it."

Beal said he never actually shaped a board for his friend. The unique surfer he was, Beal said, Webster gravitated to a unique board.

"He had a relationship with Campbell Brothers, who are some world class shapers from Southern California and they make a specific kind of board that I don't really make, the five-fin bonzer board, which he really liked," Beal said.

"Malcolm Campbell is one of the head shapers and I actually just had a little exchange with him because I made a comment on his page when  he posted something about Dale passing, and I wrote and told him how much Dale loved his boards," Beal said. "In Dale's situation, that's kind of a badge of honor to have Malcolm Campbell making boards for you."

Webster most recently worked as a custodian for the small Bodega Bay Elementary School, a job which Beal said allowed him to surf in the morning before his shift in the afternoon.

Webster was one of the subjects of Dana Brown's 2003 surf documentary Step Into Liquid.

With the news of his passing, remembrances of Dale Webster have poured in from around the surfing and non-surfing world.

"He was just a cool fixture for Sonoma County and for the surfing history," Beal said. "You know, there's not a lot of people that come out of this coast that get recognized in the surfing world because we all tend to kind of keep things quiet around here to to limit the exposure."

"But he was one guy that cracked the code and kind of got recognition from a lot of [people], Kelly Slater and Surfer Magazine and just, you know, everybody knows who Dale is," Beal said. "So, kind of kind of a cool thing for Sonoma County just to have the guy like that."

The Sonoma County man who surfed at least three waves every day for 40 years died on August 9th. Dale Webster was 76.