Dawn Patrol App Quantifies Surfing for LA's Olympic Coastline
Dawn Patrol, the 4.7-star rated surf tracking app, now quantifies every wave, paddle stroke, and session for surfers on Apple Watch and Garmin devices, bringing an honest numbers layer to a sport traditionally unmeasured. Founded by Anton Bremer, a Dutchman who built the app to track his own waves, the six-person company's technology is particularly relevant as Olympic surfing becomes permanent and heads for LA's own coastline for the 2028 Games.
Dawn Patrol, the 4.7-star rated surf tracking app, provides surfers with an honest, quantified record of every session, from wave count and speed to paddle distance and heart rate. Available on Apple Watch and, since December 2025, Garmin smartwatches, the app transforms wrist-worn devices into comprehensive surf instruments. This expansion to Garmin Instinct, Fēnix, and Epix users, covered by American Surf Magazine, significantly broadens its reach within the global surfing community.
The app's core functionality maps every wave ridden, measures speed and distance, and tracks paddling stroke by stroke. Through a partnership with Surfline, users can access forecasts directly on their watch face and even watch back their own waves captured by Surfline cameras. This data reveals what surfers intuitively know: a session is hours in the water for minutes on a wave – a badge of devotion in dawn patrol culture.
The story of Dawn Patrol began 5,500 miles from California's iconic surf breaks. Anton Bremer, a Dutchman who learned to surf in Bali, built the app himself after struggling to count his waves. 'I built this because I wanted to remember my waves, and it's humbling to see how many others now use it to keep their own surfing stories alive,' states Bremer, founder of Dawn Patrol. His six-person company has spent nine years refining the app, earning a profile from Apple's App Store editorial team and maintaining a commitment to user privacy, funding development through its Soul Surfer subscription rather than ads or data sales.
This quantified approach to surfing is particularly relevant in California, home to over 3 million active surfers. With LA28 naming Lower Trestles as the 2028 Olympic surfing venue, surfing is now a permanent Olympic sport. As the Games approach, the ability to track and measure performance becomes increasingly significant for both amateur and professional surfers along the coastline, bringing a 'scoreboard' to a sport that has historically run on memory and anecdote.
Trend context
Los Angeles is entering a three-year countdown in which everything that touches the 2028 Games is a local story, and surfing holds a special place in it: newly permanent as an Olympic sport, staged on LA's own coastline, in the region that wrote the culture — Lowers even appears in "Surfin' USA." Every LA desk is building its Olympics bench now, and the quantified-surfing angle — the lineup that keeps score — is a 2028 story available years before the flame arrives.
Underneath sits the boom: the industry's own 2026 Growth Report finds US participation continuing to climb on youth and diversity, with market analyses estimating 35 million surfers worldwide, up 25% since 2018, and women's share rising steadily. Surfing is the last major boom sport without a settled numbers layer — running got Strava, cycling got power meters — and the layer arriving on the wrist people already wear is being built not by a platform giant but by six people from the North Sea. For a features desk, that inversion is the story; for a news desk, Trestles is the peg; the app sits where the two meet.
About Dawn Patrol Surf Tracking
Why we exist
Most of surfing vanishes the moment it happens — the wave of the day unwitnessed, the progress unfelt, the two-hour session reduced to "it was fun." Dawn Patrol exists so surfers can keep what the ocean gives them: every wave counted, every session kept, every bit of progress visible. Built by an outsider the sport let in, for everyone the sport should let in.
How we do it
Built by surfers, our core engineering challenge is precise wave detection from a wrist in moving water, refined over nine years. We keep the core features free, funding through our Soul Surfer subscription, not ads or data sales. We prioritize user privacy, never sharing data without explicit consent, and focus on authentic community stories.
What we do
Dawn Patrol turns Apple Watch — and now Garmin — into a surf watch: wave counting, GPS wave maps, speed, distance, paddle tracking, heart rate and calories via the Health app, Surfline forecasts on custom watch faces, Surfline camera playback of your own waves, challenges, and session sharing. Free core features; premium analytics by subscription.
Why it matters
The enemy is the vanished session — effort and joy that leave no trace — and the two bad answers the market offered: single-purpose gadgets that cost more than they measure, and fitness platforms that treat your data as their product. A sport this hard-won deserves its own honest instrument.
Who it's for
The surfer who drove ninety minutes before dawn for two proper waves and wants the proof. The improver who suspects their pop-up is slow and would rather know. And every surfer whose non-surfing family finally gets to see what "just one more" actually meant.
Proof points
Launched in 2017, Dawn Patrol maintains a 4.7-star App Store rating after nine years of continuous shipping by a six-person team. It has facilitated over 200+ million tracked waves and 2.5 billion paddle strokes. Featured by Apple's App Store editorial and part of their Small Business Program, Dawn Patrol holds strong partnerships with Surfline for forecast and camera integration, and Garmin Connect for expanded device support. The Garmin integration was covered by American Surf Magazine in December 2025.
Traction & credibility
With nine years of continuous product development since 2017, Dawn Patrol has consistently delivered new features. Key credibility markers include: Apple's App Store editorial profiling the company; a working partnership with Surfline for forecast data and wave-camera playback; and the Garmin Connect integration, featured by American Surf Magazine in December 2025, which expands reach to Instinct, Fēnix, and Epix users. The company has not taken nor does plan to take any investment. James Price says "We are trying to stay true to our roots, we love surfing. We love apps. We love surf/sport data."
Spokespeople
Anton Bremer
Founder
Anton Bremer is a Dutch software developer who fell for the one sport his homeland can't host. "It's not the first sport you do as a Dutchman," he admits — but a handful of surf lessons in Bali changed the direction of his life, and trips to breaks around the world sealed it. Back home, he ran into the surfer's oldest problem. His friends counted their waves and compared them after every session; Anton always lost count. When Apple released a Watch with GPS built in, the web-programmer-turned-iOS-developer saw his answer: "Why not have the watch do it for me?" That question became Dawn Patrol, and a genuinely hard engineering problem — detecting a ridden wave from a wrist moving through open water — that Anton has spent nine years refining. Today the app counts waves, maps rides, measures speed and paddling for surfers worldwide, has been profiled by Apple's own App Store editorial, and partners with Surfline and Garmin. He still runs a team of just six, and named the company after his favourite hour in the water: dawn patrol, surfing before sunrise.
Talking points
The human
Anton Bremer, the Dutchman who couldn't count his waves, built Dawn Patrol, the app that now tracks sessions for surfers worldwide.
The story
Anton Bremer learned to surf in Bali as an adult from a country with no real waves, kept losing count of the ones he caught, and — when Apple put GPS in its watch — built the counter himself. Nine years later his six-person company's app tracks waves, speed, paddling and sessions for surfers worldwide, pairs with Surfline's cameras so riders can watch their own waves back, and just opened to Garmin — all while keeping the core free and refusing to sell user data.
Why it matters
Surfing has boomed to an estimated 35 million participants without ever getting its honest numbers layer — the sport runs on memory and exaggeration, charmingly and completely unmeasured. A tiny independent solving that from the wrist, against giants who never bothered, is the pattern tech desks exist to cover: the niche obsessive out-building the platform.
Who does it impact
Surfers get proof, progress and the session their family can finally see. The sport gets its Strava moment without surrendering its data to one. Apple and Garmin get the answer to "what's the watch actually for." And every small developer gets the counter-example: nine years, six people, one problem solved properly.
Proof points
Anton Bremer, founder of Dawn Patrol, states, 'I built this because I wanted to remember my waves, and it's humbling to see how many others now use it to keep their own surfing stories alive.' The app holds a 4.7-star App Store rating and has been regularly featured by Apple's App Store editorial team, highlighting its impact and quality. Its partnership with Surfline enables camera playback of users' own ridden waves, and the app on Garmin devices has recently shipped.
CTA
The app is free to try on any Apple Watch — the review writes itself in the water. Anton Bremer available; the interview is the origin story.
Images
Dawn Patrol Surf Tracking on Garmin Device
Dawn Patrol Surf Tracking Watch Face on Apple Watch Ultra
Dawn Patrol Surf Tracking within a surf session
Laura Crane Checking Nazare Stats
Get in touch
James Price
Head of Marketing
Drop me a note and I'll reply by email.