Wave Pool World Tour

Doubtful. A good board has to perform well in the ocean......not a wave pool. Two totally different things. Heck, they are launching into waves while standing in chest deep water and taking off in a couple strokes and then surfing a wave that lacks any bump, chop or sections. Its basically a flawless speed run.

 

That was funny Barry.

I'd totally surf the wave. Don't get me wrong. I just found it boring when compared to the real thing, specifically in a competitive setting. Close heat, so and so needs a score. Set rolls in. He takes off under the lip..... will it close out? Will it offer another section after the barrel? Will it clamp? Will it speed off without him? Will it slow down and force him to link turns together for the score? That excitement is lost on this wave. It all comes down to the ability of the surfer. It's cool that the wave was made and is as good as it is. But let's not get carried away here. It's by no means a substitute or replacement of the living breathing constantly changing ocean

 

It would be fun as hell to have access to that wave. If it was head high and clean every day there’d be no need but it’s not.

 

OK... but doesn't it seem possible that this could change all that? If the future of professional surfing includes a "world tour" of perfect, albeit artificial waves, the goals of board design WILL change.

Surfboard design for the past 60 years has been largely driven by anecdotal evidence; feedback from riders about how the board performs. With guys like Tomo starting to look at design from a more analytical, quantitative perspective, eliminating variables like current and chop helps isolate other, more measurable variables... like the speed and directional flow of water across the bottom of the board... how how different rail shapes and volumes interact with water lifting up the face of the wave... how subtle changes in rocker profile affect how deep you can get in the barrel.

We're not anywhere near that... but I think it could be the beginning of something much bigger down the road.

I'll add that I'm no fan of surfing artificial waves. I'd do it if I had the chance... once. For me it would be a novelty, but something I'd tire of quickly. Hell... I can't even stand to surf the same spot too many times in a row, let alone the same exact wave.

 

u guys are a bunch of haters,hating on a damn pool lol.growing up poor u don't get to swim in pools lol.I swam in ponds,lakes,creeks,rivers,the bay,the ocean.basically any body of water.pools are expensive.i wish I could surf in a pool lol.probably will never get the chance tho.im surrounded by water I cant justify paying to go swim in a pool

 

The answer to a question no one was asking.

 

I have tremendous foresight - it will be asked.....

 

^this made me laugh...i needed it.

 

Dude I was from the ghetto from the get-go. Ain't no swimming where I came from.

 

Paddle battles for priority, interference, wave selection mistakes, that magic wave the ocean seemed to create for Kelly at the last minute, Mick fighting off a great white, all gone in the wave pool. Not hating on it, thought the wave was unbelievable, a true feat of human engineering. But it ain't a replacement for actual competitive surfing. For speciality events that the WSL hopes will bring a wider fan base that's cool, they're a business after all. I'm sure they don't intend to replace the "real" events with wave pools. I hope.

 

Lol! I just said to an old friend of mine yesterday... a dude I grew up with when Cape May was the sticks... "remember when we couldn't drive past a lake without swimming in it?" We got a good laugh at that one, remembering how many times we just pulled over and jumped in some random lake or cedar river. Caught a lot of chain pickerel back then, too.

 

Honest questions--what is a "cedar river"? Lined with cedars on the shore?? Chain pickerels--are they not there anymore?

 

That's pretty much it, BC. Cedar lakes and cedar rivers are common through the NJ Pinelands, and the water is literally tea-colored from all of the cedar that grows along and in the riparian zones. If you swim in them, you come out of the water with this red stuff all over you.

From an old NJ Monthly article:

"The unique tea-colored (or “cedar”) water that flows through the Pinelands is evidence of the area’s biodiversity. The water’s light-brown hue is a result of the tannic acids present in the Pine Barrens’ plant life—especially the Atlantic white cedar—as well as naturally occurring iron in many of the streams."

Not sure if the pickerel are still there... but those fish dominate the ecosystem if they are, 'cause they feed on anything that moves, and get big. Biggest one I ever caught was 36".

 

I can see artificial waves benefiting shapers in designing a board that would work better in the ocean. I was looking at a few of the barrel section of the rights and thought it looked a LOT like Sandspit. I could see a shaper testing a bunch of shapes for riding a critical barrel like Sandspit taking a bunch of boards to a place like this and getting more test time in a couple weekend sessions (and without all of the tide/wind/fickle spot/paddle battle interference) than they could at the real place in months. Just sit there and keeping trying outboards with different fin setups, tail shapes, rocker....

 

I have always wondered about that. Thanks for sharing.

 

I can see what you guys are taking about. If you fix all the variables and those are constant then you can focus on the boart and fins only. The caveat is that the constant variables will no longer be constant once you take it to the ocean where the variables are ever changing. If you happen to find conditions that match that of the artificial wave then all variables will match again, but not likely to happen. So I see it being helpful but not as helpful as you would think.

 

The wave itself makes it a perfect test vehicle for surfboard refinement.

 

+1 Kidde. It seems logical. I know I have thought on more than one occasion when surfing a reef break that it was "machine like", and surfing those waves gave me a much better experience in tuning in my surfing on a single board (even changing and testing a different fin set up can help you learn and refine your board riding). I can only imagine as LB mentioned, the things you would learn from riding the machine. It would only help refine board design.

Nobody desires to have the magic stick for shitty conditions (although board shapes have evolved to handle just about any conditions). If you look at the clip I posted, Parko is riding a skim board and Knost is being Knost....trial and error (to Mitchell's point) in a fixed setting should render some results...who knows where this is going. It has definitely opened the door to an area of surfing never seen before.

 

It's like what a wind tunnel does for aerodynamic testing purposes. Probably better as a tool than a contest format imho.

Funny thing is, surfers often reach back for technology rather than forward. Case in point: Bonzers, Alaia, Fish, planing hulls etc.

We already know that the fastest boards tend to have little rocker and parallel outlines. Curious how much tinkering we could do to unlock a 5th gear.

 

I wonder if surfing in a wave pool is like having sex with a blow up doll...