> He chortled, but he did not stop peering across the water, assessing the waves and the state of the pool during the three minutes that it was left to settle between waves.
1 wave every 3 minutes will never be economically feasible. They're currently charging $10,000 per hour, whereas BSR charges $60 per hour and you get several times as many waves per session.
American Wave Machines' system can already pump out a full set of waves every 10 seconds AND they can change the shape with the push of a button. Beginner, intermediate, advanced, left, right, air sections, barrels, they do it all.
Slater's wave will never be anything more than a toy for himself and a few of his close friends. Every surfer I know said the surf ranch competition was the most boring thing they ever watched.
> AND they can change the shape with the push of a button
The Surf Ranch can do some of this... they apparently have over 50 wave types. I'm not sure if it's as versatile, but it's more than just one type of wave. The wired article from September did a better job of talking about the tech (albeit, not much):
Yeah, the surf lakes design looks simpler and safer as there is no iron plow sweeping under the water. Also the plunger as a steam piston would adapt well to any arid environment.
"I said can you picture some kid who just learns in a wave pool but has this perfect wave at his disposal, and becomes unimaginably skilled, and becomes a world champion because they trained on this incredible wave. And she says yeah, and then they paddle out at the pipeline and drown. And we both laughed"
William Finnegan is the best surf writer in the world probably and this is the best article on the surf ranch so far. As an ocean engineer it’s a pretty awesome spectacle and a wonder of a system.
But it totally glosses over the environmental impact and the hypocrisy of the entire thing. Surfers like Kelly Slater and Steph Gilmore are huge environmental advocates, yet the pool uses and absolutely obscene amount of electricity and water every day (the water usage is worse, using up to 300,000 gallons a day!!!) and everyone is being flown there on private jets.
It’s also just localism all over again, except now it’s just straight up money that keep you out of the club instead of a more abstract idea of being a local.
The water is recycled...due to the nature of the water in the Central Valley and its intended use, they can't just pump up the water from the ground all the time. The water needs to be treated to remove contaminants, then is constantly recycled to prevent algae growth.
The pool does use a ton of water when it gets (re)filled, but that's only a few times a year. Filling the entire pool uses about the same amount of water as the average California golf course uses in one day...
It’s also just localism all over again, except now it’s just straight up money that keep you out of the club instead of a more abstract idea of being a local.
The Surf Ranch is a high-end/test pool, and they've been pretty open about that.
Source: Got to visit the wave pool and talk to the employees during the Surf Ranch Pro in September.
EDIT: Follow-up. For point of comparison, while 300,000 gallons sounds like a lot, a "storm" in LA can drop 100 million of gallons of rainwater in 24 hours...LA's catchbasin system absorbed 22 billion gallons of water in the 4 month period between October 2016 and Jan 2017 (https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/01/23/68360/how-much-storm-wa...)
surfing culture has changed a lot...kelly slater's participation led to a big part of the change. i watched him give interviews in a recent andy irons documentary touched by god and the man is a pure machine - there's nothing laid back or surfer-like about him at all. you respect him for his complete dedication to the craft and willpower to rise to the top of the surfing world no matter what, not for his carefree, anti-corporate, all-too human personality (personified by andy irons and his tragic relapses in/out of drugs while still competing at top surfing competitions)
guaranteed if you go out to your local beach and poll the surfers, 50%+ are well-paid workers in corporate america, otherwise they wouldn't have the means and time to buy all the gear needed and live close enough to the beach to surf as a hobby
the wave machine is perfect for practicing, showing off, and competing for a televised audience, which will bring in more sponsors and of course put more money/attention into the sport. the surf you know is mostly dead [1], which isn't necessarily a bad thing, everything changes
Surfing culture is still very much alive. It's just that with growth, it's no longer only the beach bums. I work pretty close to Venice, and have polled the surfers there before, and it's definitely no-where close to 50+% "well-paid workers in corporate america." It's closer to 25% corporate workers, about half people who live/breathe/work surfing, and the remainder an odd mix of everyone else.
i surf down by tower 26 occassionally and live near venice. old school beach bums are a dying breed. given the rent in venice/SM the new crowd of people moving in is all silicon beach residents/young professionals/influencers. maybe i'll see you down there some day ;)
The pool does use a ton of water when it gets (re)filled, but that's only a few times a year. Filling the entire pool uses about the same amount of water as the average California golf course uses in one day
So, if it's OK for a golf course to waste a bunch of water, then it's OK for everyone to waste a bunch of water.
Got it.
/Lives in the desert. Gets annoyed by people in water scarce environments making excuses for wasting water.
1) It's not a water-scarce environment. The Surf Ranch is surrounded by farms.
2) The Surf Ranch uses less water than its surrounding properties, and uses less water than an activity that most people in dry climates regard as a waste of time (i.e. golfing).
Like all pools, it takes a lot of water. They don't just dump the water into the system. They have tanks on-site to reclaim most of it, and a neighboring overflow/storage pool to minimize water wastage.
And this is just the beta pool, where they're trying to figure out the wave mechanics. Commercial pools like the one in Florida will have more advanced water reclamation/recycling systems.
If you had followed up further on the climate classification, you would have seen that the classification is heavily based on the portion of the year during which rainfall is received, not just on the amount of rainfall received. Furthermore, a number of cities in otherwise extremely rainy locations (including Brazil and India) are also categorized as Bsk climates because they also receive most of their water in a limited portion of the year.
If you want to see an example of a wasteful activity in the CA Central Valley, check out https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-quietly-amasses-califor... (also posted on HN earlier today). The Surf Ranch replaced a farm, and over the year uses less water than the farm it replaced, so that counts as a net benefit.
>>uses less water than the farm it replaced, so that counts as a net benefit.
>No, it doesn't. Less waste is still waste.
If waste is bad and this wastes less, that is a net improvement from a waste perspective regardless of whether or not you think it's good for the world.
Your viewpoints would lead to the total cessation of all environmentally-impacting activities. While it’s admirable that you hold these views to the maximum extreme possible, you will find little traction with others who do not feel as extremely as you. That doesn’t mean anyone is right or wrong, but you’ll find people reject your views solely due to the extremism with which they’re expressed. Consider whether that’s the desired outcome and, if not, consider adjusting your approach accordingly.
EDIT: If you have a personal story to tell about water waste, sharing that would go a long way towards helping the rest of us be able to connect with your position.
As a river surfer surfing in Munich I'd love to see our river wave replicated more often. Rivers float 'for free' anyway. Why not just use its power whenever possible and reasonable?
Going to Munich - and not having heard about the downtown river wave - and then seeing people in wetsuits carrying their boards, dripping along the pavement:what, where, how!!!??? And then finding the wave and watching all the groms - and a couple of silver surfers - for a few glorious hours. And then my girlfriend (now wife) and I cycled up river, left our bikes and clothes and floated back down in our kecks. And then walked back to our bikes and clothes which were still there. Ahhhhh...European summers! And the naked people in the park...hahahahahah. Anywhere in the anglophone world you’d call the police if there were guys getting naked in the park...that is a great place!
River waves are just not comparable to ocean waves. The mechanics are different and so is the shape and power. I only know of one river wave that reliably stands up and curls and is big enough to surf, and that's on the corner of a huge hydraulic on the Zambezi River in Africa.
River waves also tend to be sensitive to flow, changing pretty dramatically (or even disappearing) with more or less water. There are plenty of river waves that attract surfers, like the Lachine waves near Montreal. But even at their best, they're not like ocean waves.
I've been thinking about this as well. I suspect recreating a Munich wave would be harder, perhaps much harder, to do than my imagination suggests. Topography, water volume and speed, to say nothing of access and permits etc. But I want one in my town.
Yeah, there is some risk. It's not the concrete on the side though but some rough rocks on the bottom which can be quite nasty... That's why locals refer beginners to the second wave in Munich which is located in Thalkirchen.
There are some river waves in Boise, Jackson Hole and a few minor ones, but the best are still in Canada, besides Munich, Austria, Swiss and France. As river surfer you don't really care for these expensive big machines, they are not sustainable. Like the Tokyo wave in the 80, which only lasted a few years.
But it totally glosses over the environmental impact and the hypocrisy of the entire thing. Surfers like Kelly Slater and Steph Gilmore are huge environmental advocates, yet the pool uses and absolutely obscene amount of electricity and water every day (the water usage is worse, using up to 300,000 gallons a day!!!) and everyone is being flown there on private jets.
I'd say any sport that has a world cup style of competition, where you are constantly flying to different locales isn't very environmentally friendly.
But I see this in skiing/snowboarding (and other outdoor sports). What is the angle that these athletes use to show their pro-environment slant? Is it all just talk/greenwashing? Or is it just that they don't feel their personal environmental impact is all that important?
300,000 gallons is nothing depending on location. I had a seasonal pond on my property that was probably 2,000,000 gallons and could refill in a few days during spring runoff.
In related news, HBO is releasing a surfing documentary tonight that features Slater. It features people who worked on well received ESPN 30 for 30 docs, so I expect it to be high quality.
Great article, even though I don't really care about surfing.
One thing that struck me is how he describes the physical attraction of the wave, the need for it. After spending every surf session in your entire life waiting for a good wave, yearning for it, scrutinizing each swell to see if this is finally the right one, to have this perfect wave available whenever you want... It must be like handing the keys of the prescription drugs cabinet to an opioid addict.
I wonder if a good parallel for the wave machine is the advent of climbing walls in the 80s. I would say, 40 years on, that indoor climbing walls have indubitably been a Good Thing for climbing in general. Yet I'm pretty sure they sparked the same debates about the nature of the sport, its democratization and professionalization, etc. when they made their first appearance.
Just for some context, the author wrote an autobiography called Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life that won a pulitzer prize and is a bible for a lot of surfers. Probably just about every (American) surfer with a college degree has read that book.
I surfed in the UK all my life and loved every minute of it. Then, on a whim, my brother and I went travelling around the world surfing.
It after a while it struck us, "Oh, that's how you get good at surfing. Good, consistent waves." We came back a hundred times better at surfing, but it ruined UK waves for us. Waiting six months for a good day wasn't much fun.
We turned to kitesurfing.
I would love to have one of these wave parks near us, it would be so much fun to play around in.
Currently reading David Foster Wallace's collection of essays book titled "Consider the Lobster". I get a similar feelings about the topics of the essays because of his great, quirky-for-journalistic-essay style in them.
Five different waves for various levels of surfer skill and generated seconds apart by the single plunger. A bigger wave just needs a bigger plunger.
https://www.surf-lakes.com.au/prototype/
Disclaimer: I live on the Sunny Coast so possibly biased in wanting to see Occy and his partners make it work.