The company that gave us Flowrider is back in the game! With Surf Pool™!
Tomorrow, at exactly two pm, the location of Australia’s next Wavegarden tank will be announced. First stop, Tullamarine, next stop…can you guess? Maybe the waveless and bankrupt, post-mining boom city of Perth?
Anyway, it’s gonna be raining wavepools soon. Some will be fierce and squashed and cramped. Others will be remarkable facsimiles of their ocean equivalent. Most will fall a little in-between.
As reported three days ago, there’s no shortage of wave pool companies schlepping their wares to investors, either.
Do you go Wavegarden? American Wave Machines? The unseen Webber and Slater pools?
One design that’s been flying under the radar so far, is the WaveLoch Surf Pool. Remember those Flowriders that were so damn fun to ride, even if they didn’t exactly resemble surfing (finless boards, stationary wave)? They were the work of the Tom Lochtefeld. Tom’s been in the game since the eighties, opening that first Flowrider in Texas in 1991. He knows the central problem to wavepools. They cost too much to build, and way too much to run.
What makes their Surf Pool different to the others, says Wave Loch, is its ability to… make money. Let’s examine the spin.
“Forget the troubled, inefficient wave machines of the past. SurfLoch SurfPool’s™ innovative design offers: consistent, quality waves with unprecedented frequency in the smallest physical footprint, and with the greatest energy efficiency. While the few surfing wave pools in existence have struggled to make ends meet, well over 10 years led to the development and refinement of the proprietary SurfLoch SurfPool™ technology, making what was once infeasible, now financially viable and ready to deploy.
A development in the English city of Bristol chose WaveLoch over Wavegarden because of its ability to deliver more waves and, supposedly, without the bugs that have bedevilled Surf Snowdonia, Wavegarden’s first commercial tank.
(Here’s the PR vid for The Wave Bristol’s crowdfunding campaign.)
Me? I ain’t convinced about Surf Pool yet.
I like the spin, I like the idea. Cheaper and more reliable means cheaper entry fees and the more likely it is to happen.
But, watch the video below.
Is that… all?
The little mechanical shark is a nice touch, however.
Meanwhile, if you’re ready for a wallop and suck session at a pool, and you’re swinging in Florida, it’s hard to go wrong with three hours (100 waves) at the Typhoon Lagoon. Twelve hundred bucks. Bring your pals. Click here to book.
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Haha ah well. Tassie is an underrated surfers paradise. Not all good trips mean board shorts. In fact if you’re a visitor to Victoria it is a compulsory custom that you carry a 3kg hessian sack of red meat at all times in the water to feed the locals.
THIRTY FIVE MILLION SURFERS WORLDWIDE?
No wonder these businesses keep imploding. They’re utterly deluded about the size of the market.
You’re spot on, there are easily 35 million in Australia alone! Surfing yeeeewwww broheim!!!!
You only have to stand up on a foamie to qualify Nick. Those are the people you’ve chosen to surround yourself with.
I’m currently living and working inland in Canada. Couldn’t tell you how many people I meet that love to open with “you’re Australian, you surf? Me too!” I feel like telling them that one trip to Costa Rica doesn’t qualify you as a surfer; you and I don’t do the same thing at all. Instead I just nod, listen to their stories of ‘almost drowning on a 2 metre day’, and let them buy me a beer and shot… I’m weak.
too early to call 2016 the Year of the Wavepool?
No I’d say your on the money with that.
The big guy looks stoked.
http://www.poolgrit.com
Surfing sucks!
We can finally have real surf offs! Like Italian Spider-Man! The WSL future has arrived. I own all copyright!
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
Wouldn’t that be an interference? I could get into this new-look WSL.
I’m ready. Cmon Paul speaker, lets get this show going. The future is now. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Looks like the crappy wave pools at water parks….
The average surfer spends $59-100 per surf? Who did their survey consist of? Snowdonia locals and the Old Guys Rule SUP club?
You think it’s a stretch? Take your normal Silicon Beach surfer – maybe they just dropped a grand on a SUP. $400 wetsuit. Maybe the have a longboard or an brand new Hypto Crypto in the garage too. 15 to 30 surfs a year maybe?
i did a little mental math and it’s not too far off the mark if you’re counting time, gas, wetsuit, board and accessories at retail cost…
Is cocaine included? I’ve spent less in a year and still done a lot?
Yes, cocaine falls into the supplement category. That is why the figures are fucked.
All I need are some tasty waves AND A FUCKING RAIL OF NOSE BEERS AND I’LL BE THE CUNT PUMPING THRU THE INSIDE SECTION! I MAY JUST HIT ONE AND SKIMBOARD IN TO THE ONE LIKE THAT GUY ON THE RIGHT!
Haha the guy on the right hander must have done a leap of faith off the railing on the side to have achieved those tracks. It’s not a good sign for the developers of this wave pool.
I was channeling the American cavy there for a second, fuck. I gotta figure the guy was in ” the bar” and just had to take advantage of his skimboarding experience, if his stance was wider I’d say it was Florida’s own brad domke! Jesus that kid has an unholy air and barrel game but his cutbacks make me envy your famous Brazilian tailwork! Haha
Oh yeah I totally agree. No matter how many nice things one says about Brad Domke he’s still a skimboarder.
Joe turpels voice “ticking all the boxes of being a cunt, bagging on his home ,Brazil and all around drug use….”
Not that there’s anything wrong with drug use. The people walking around like zombies and putting their newborn’s in microwaves are suffering from mental illness or a lack of sleep associated with their drug use. There’s a little bit wrong with Brazil.
Shit I’m on a fuckload of muscle relaxers and valium and I’m doing just fine, the only thing i’m fucking up is a box of honeycomb.
Your not in the game unless your dropping those motherfucking honeycombs in some motherfucking milk
The milk was upstairs and I was more fucked up than tara ried at 5 am on a Saturday. But I was slamming soda
Well according to those stats Russia is an emerging surf market. Maybe there’s a couple of those Slavic billionaires skewing the statistics?
Why are the two guys on the advanced wave white and everyone else brown?
I guess the little boy is on the yellow board is whitish too.
Cuz dude it’s the fucking ‘American sunshower’ gawl!
“Highly educated”…hilarious.
I always like that demographic snapshot of American surfers.
“Unseen” Slater wave pool? Um..I think we’ve all seen it! What remains unseen is a Webber wave pool. I thought they made BBQ kettles anyway…
If their BBQs are anything to go by though, I’m fucking in!!!
I like how all the regular footers are depicted as kooks. Goofy footers are discriminated against in Victoria where there are only a handful of lefts which aren’t just the shit side of a good right. The Prince of Ubatuba likes to have his strong leg on the accelerator not the brakes.
Hands up who’s gonna be the cunt that pumps all the way through to the inside beginners wave with monkeys arms! I bet it’s gonna be a brazzo