Wired UK – September 2019

130

Its centrepiece is a fan-shaped lagoon

with an engine house at one end, below

which about 30 paddles protrude into

the water. Clustered around the lagoon

are other low-rise offices in which

seven engineers (who are, of course,

also surfers) work at monitor screens

showing simulated waves in splashes

of colour. In the water, when I visit, a

team of people from a surf equipment

company are testing boards and wet

suits in waves created by the paddles.

Suddenly, the water level will lurch

down as the paddles suck it in, and

then it rises up, hits the opposite wall,

and rolls down the lagoon to wash up

on a concrete shore at the far end. The

precise shape of each wave is deter-

NESTLED

IN THE

PYRENEES,

THE

WAVEGARDEN

HEADQUARTERS

IS AN

EXTRAORDINARY

SIGHT.

TWO

THREE

SURFING

IS NOT JUST A

POPULAR

AND LUCRATIVE

SPORT

(figures of 23 million surfers and global

revenues between $5.5bn – $7bn are

commonly cited); it is also seen as a

profoundly meaningful experience.

Still, revenues and profile have grown

significantly, particularly in the past

seven years. In 2013, the Association

of Surfing Professionals (the global

governing body) was acquired by

ZoSea Media. Its CEO, Paul Speaker,

had worked as a marketing director for

the NFL, and co-founder Terry Hardy is

the manager of surfing superstar Kelly

Slater. ZoSea reorganised the various

public pro-surf competitions into the

World Surf League, and marketed media

rights as a single package for the first

time. In February 2019, they sold them to

Fox for an undisclosed fee, but likely well

north of the $30m paid by the previous

partner, Facebook. In 2020, surfing will

be included in the Olympic Games for the

first time, with two days of competition

based on a beach 65km from Tokyo.

There are, however, barriers to

further growth. Popular surf beaches

can become overcrowded, yet there

are still armies of potential surfers

with no access to the ocean. And live

broadcasts of events are hampered by

the need to wait for suitable sea and

weather conditions – for the Tokyo

Olympics, a leeway of 16 days had to be

built into the schedule. Tourism and

leisure businesses can be built around

surfing, but as with broadcasters, such

businesses want action that can be

scheduled. The solution of artificial

inland lakes equipped with wave-making

machines has long been anticipated,

but a good surf wave proved impos-

sible to build, until five years ago, when

increases in computing power enabled

engineers to better model turbulent

ocean swells. The question now is: what

sort of waves should be made? And for

whom? And what might the answers

mean for the soul of surfing – and our

relationship with the sea itself?

Engineers have been trying to perfect

artificial waves in water since at least the

1870s, when King Ludwig II of Bavaria

installed an electric wave machine in

a man-made underground lake at his

Linderhof Palace near Garmisch-Parten-

kirchen. Up to 30 years ago, wave-making

machines used one of three methods:

paddles; blowing pressurised air on to

the surface, or sucking in and expelling

water. Then, in 1991, a US attorney and

water-park entrepreneur called Tom

Lochtefeld launched the WaveLoch

FlowRider, roughly the size of a

five-a-side football pitch, which used

a fast-flowing sheet of water shot up

a sloping plastic surface, known as a

“sheet wave”. Riding at oblique angles to

the current, surfers could surf down the

slope, allowing the current to take them

back to the top when they reached the

bottom. The FlowRider wasn’t surfing

as anyone knew it, but it was popular

(there are now more than 200 around

the world) and had shown the potential

appeal of artificial waves in a world

where surfing was beginning to boom.

But to make real waves that surfers

wanted to ride wasn’t easy. It’s a lot more

than sending down a single big ripple

now and again, as in a wave pool aimed

at swimmers; good, surfable waves are

powerful and in ideal conditions they

roll in with regularity. Real waves can

begin thousands of kilometres from

where they will wash ashore, started

by wind blowing the water’s surface into

ripples, which eventually create a swell.

A surf creator would need to invent

machinery that mimics the sea itself.

HOW TO WHIP UP AN ARTIFICIAL WAVE

Hidden beneath the water, inside the central pier, is the “wavefoil” – a blade shaped like

an aeroplane wing that shuttles from one end of the pool to the other at 4.5 to 7 metres

per second. Powered by a gearless drive-system similar to that of a ski lift, the wavefoil

is dragged along the underwater track, creating a wake behind it. With Wavegarden’s

patented Cove technology, a system of blades controlled by bathymetry software

creates up to 1,000 waves per hour – from gentle knee-high rollers to two-metre barrels.

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