Surfers spend most of the session sitting on the board. The wave they catch is the reward for all that sitting.

The ratio is the sport, not an unfortunate feature of it. Sitting out past the break, turning the board, reading the water and letting three go by: all of that is the activity, and the ten seconds of standing up is what the sitting produced. Nobody is wasting the morning out there.

Count your waiting as part of the work rather than the gap before it. Stay in the water, keep watching the sets, learn what the good one looks like from a distance. The wave only arrives for people who were already out there when it came.