Getty Image / SAEED KHAN / AFP
An Australian man just captured a new surfing world record and entered the Guinness World Record book after completing a surfing marathon.
Blakey Johnston is a Sydney, Australia-based former professional surfer. He’s 40 years old and now a father of two with his pro surfing days behind him. But he just completed his greatest achievement ever in surfing.
This week, Blakey Johnston set the surfing world record for the longest consecutive surfing session.
After paddling out at Cronulla Beach, a popular surfing spot in New South Wales, Australia, he stayed in the water for 30 hours and 11 minutes. He took the briefest of breaks after saying he was feeling “pretty cooked” but actually paddled back out.
During his world record-setting surfing marathon, Johnston surfed for 40+ hours and rode over 700 waves. He surfed 525 waves in the first 30 hours and 11 minutes and another 175 waves in the next 9ish hours.
Here’s footage of Blakey surfing after 315 waves. It is clear he isn’t just paddling out and riding in. This bloke was carving up and down the face of those waves with cutbacks left and right.
You might ask yourself ‘why would someone go surfing for 40 straight hours?’ That’s a reasonable question. I’m usually wiped out after paddling out a decent wave break. In fact, my arms are usually ready to fall off and my back is screaming after 3 hours in the water.
Well, he did it with the goal of raising $250,000 for mental health. That is an enormous amount of money for one man to fundraise.
Not a problem for Blakey Johnston! He plowed through his goal and raised $346,000 for the Chumpy Pullin Foundation and youth mental health causes, according to a feature in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Here is Blakey Johnston emerging victorious from the water after a surfing world record-setting marathon:
In order to train for this record-setting surfing achievement, he did have to practice surfing some night sessions underneath the lights:
Why mental health?
The reason Blakey Johnston chose mental health as his fund-raising cause was because he’s lost three close ones due to mental health conditions.
On his website, ‘worldslongestsurf‘, he writes that this year marks 10 years since Blakey lost his dad to a battle with mental health. He also touched on his own struggle with mental health, saying “It affected me personally a lot too. I have my own battles.”
Here’s Blakey a week before attempting his record-setting surfing marathon:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VxLcEQvLdeE
His surfing world record story was quickly picked up by the Sydney news:
It’s always awesome to see great people doing great things for an even greater cause.