Huntington Beach-based Surfline, the go-to site for surf reports, has a new way to keep track of all those waves you surfed today via a special app that sends video right back to your iPhone.
The Surfline Sessions app lets surfers track their rides and have video clips captured by company-owned cameras around the world sent directly to their smartphones. Surfline Sessions is available on Surfline’s iOS app for surfers who wear an Apple Watch.
Ben Freeston, the company’s vice president of data science, predicts Surfline’s app will be “super popular” and lead to greater market penetration for the company which provides a variety of surf-related news and weather forecasts.
“We’d always spoken to surfers before they went surfing” about the best places to go,” Freeston told the Business Journal in a recent interview. “The conversation kind of ended once they left for the beach. We thought about what they might want to know after a session, after they’d been in the water.”
The app introduced late last month is the latest addition to Surfline’s array of company technology that has been helping to predict the best waves for decades.
The company uses wind and weather data and a network of almost 600 high-definition cameras to keep track of waves and riders, with most of the cameras in the U.S., but also covering parts of Europe, Australia, Morocco and Central America, Freeston said. Artificial intelligence is worked into the mix to improve accuracy.
Forecasting Chief Kevin Wallis said wave predictions for the next day or two have an accuracy rate in the 80% to 90% range.
Data collected from the app will actually be added to the mix to improve predictions even for the predominantly subscriber-supported company in Surf City.
High Tide
The new feature is easy to use.
A surfer connects his or her Apple Watch to the account in the Surfline app and heads to the beach. The surfer presses “Start” on the watch before paddling out. After surfing for as long as they wish in front of any Surfline camera, the surfer presses “Stop” on the way in. Their rides will be delivered to the Surfline app by the time they get to their phone.
Surfline Sessions is currently only supported on Apple iPhone, while compatibility with other devices is in process, the company said.
The company, founded in 1985 and now with 85 employees, aims to help surfers “score better waves more often.” Huntington Beach was the site of the recently concluded Vans U.S. Open of Surfing.
Surfline Sessions also provides GPS-driven insights including number of waves ridden, top speed attained and the length of a person’s longest ride—in both feet and seconds.
There’s another advantage to the phone app: it’s cheaper and more practical than having to hire your own cameraperson.
