By 2011, when they first met
Hounsfield, the brothers were working
on a design in which a rectangular 300m
lagoon was bisected by a pier, and a
snowplough-shaped sled dragged along
the pier to create a large wave on either
side. Initially impressed, Hounsfield set
up a company (called The Wave, because
“I wanted to make waves of positive
change”), and spent two years findinga site and securing planning permission
for a 70-acre park, with the lagoon at its
heart. It was only after that first burst
of activity that he began to spot short-
comings in the Wavegarden technology.
When he surfed its waves in the
Pyrenees base, the waves felt too fast
and unnatural, there was a minute and
half between them, and if any repairs
were needed, the entire lagoon had to bemined by an operator casually tapping
a laptop in a cabin overlooking the pool.
Josema Odriozola, the engineer
behind Wavegarden, gestures at some
low, round humps passing down the pool.
“We call these waves Waikiki, because
they are small, and have a little white
water, like in Waikiki,” he says. “They’re
good for people to learn on. But we can
make many different kinds.”
In the cabin, the operator at the laptop
presses a few keys. “This is the Beast,”
says Odriozola. “It’s based on waves on
the west coast of Ireland, which are some
of the hardest in the world to surf.”
The water drops again, and this time
a vast seething mass rises up, crashes
hard against the lagoon wall, and then
breaks as it rumbles down the pool to
crash noisily at the beach end. Odriozola
laughs. “I couldn’t ride that one,” he says.
“But some of the best surfers who come
here, they want the challenge.”
Quietly spoken, and dressed in a polo
shirt and jeans, Odriozola grew up in
nearby San Sebastián with his brother
Fernando. Both lifelong surfers, they
co-own the company: Josema takes care
of wave generation, Fernando handles
sales. They started out 15 years ago when
Josema, a trained engineer then working
in sports marketing, hit on the idea of
launching the surfing equivalent of a
skate park, though his dedication to the
cause long pre-dates that. He became
an engineer because sailing as a young
boy instilled in him a lifelong obsession
with waves. “If you want to sail, you have
to understand the physics of wind and
water, and if you want to surf, you need
to know how wind affects the swell, how
currents affect waves. Surfing connects
you with nature, and physics explains
nature. So when I first started to think
about artificial waves, my first thought
was, I might find a way to do it or not, but
at least I will learn more about waves.
“Having said that,” he adds, “I never
thought it would be so complicated.”
When Odriozola started out on the
project, he discovered there were several
wave technologies in existence or devel-
opment, “but none making waves that
people wanted to surf, waves that had
the right shape and felt natural. And no
one had used CFD [computational fluid
dynamics] to actually design waves
before, so we had to learn, and develop
software. Sometimes, a wave modelled
on a screen looks good, but just doesn’t
feel right when you create it in the water.”
Using his engineering knowledge, fluid
dynamics specialists, and a small testing
pool with rudimentary paddles, he began
creating simulations based on his own
memories from 30 years of surfing, and
images of surf spots from Google Earth. ABOVE: FERNANDO ODRIOZOLA, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR OF WAVEGARDEN09-19-FTwave.indd 131 23/07/2019 16:39