Melbourne wave tank to reopen June 19; new slab that stays open in onshores and improved version of “the beast” that don’t pinch or chandelier to be revealed!

Guaranteed tubes at seven dollars apiece ain't a bad sell.

It’s been a wild debut year for Australia’s first, and still only, public wave tank, located a mile-and-a-half walk, run or thirty-dollar cab ride from Melbourne airport.

In January, Urbnsurf was closed after freak “mud rain” left the facility with a brown tank. It was an act of God that must’ve taken the joint’s PR team by surprise given “mud-rain” is unlikely to’ve made it onto the list of potential closures. Death, turds, paralysis, board through an eyeball, lightning, hail, these you can prepare for and mount compelling responses to.

But to be shat on from outer space?

Also shitting on the pool was a Chinese-made influenza that shuttered the pool, and everything else, for two months.

Urbnsurf used the time closed to jump into a little early maintenance: peeling paint was patched, the generator got an early service etc.

In  two weeks, the place reopens.

With a few changes, most of ’em good.

Right now it’s eighty bucks to jump in a pool with eighteen other surfers hollering for each set’s twelve waves. (There’s eighteen sets an hour.)

Upon reopening, a new sesh for what can loosely be called “experts” will cost $129, twelve surfers in the water and every set a slab or  “beast mode” and its three variants. If it’s onshore, you’ll just get B4, a new version of the Beast that will stay open even if a mean ol’ southerly is tearing hell out of the place.

The other Beast modes have also been tweaked, reducing the weird chandeliering you get sometimes,

Eighteen tubs for $A129 or $US90 works out a pretty reasonable seven bucks apiece.

You wanna know if there’s an air wave yet?

Yeah, me too.

They got two.

One’s called The Ramp; the other don’t have a name but it’s supposedly “Waco-esque”.

No plans to loose it to the public sessions yet ’cause it’s so intimidating, effectively the Beast mode as a closeout.

(Book a private hour for $1500 and you can call in whatever you want.)

And the water temp?

In the guts of summer it hovered around twenty (sixty-five F); now it’s down to twelve (fifty-three F).

As a rule, it’s a buck-and-a-half under Victoria’s ocean water temps.

Brrrrrr, yeah, although you can now hire four-three and five-four Rip Curl suits.

Booties, hoods, too.

Jacuzzis remain closed until further notice.