The Surf is Never Flat with Man Made Waves
Posted by Margeaux Buerger on Mon, Sep 27, 2010 @ 08:30 AM
Are you land locked? Is the surf flat today? Never fear, you can make your own waves. The wave pool is the more traditional method and one of the newest ideas is an artificial reef. You may soon be finding one of these attractions near you.
Bournemouth Beach in the UK has created Europe's first artificial surf reef 'Boscombe Surf Reef'. The reef is 220m offshore and just east of Boscombe Pier and is made up of 55 giant sandbags and is the size of a football field.
The reef is not a wave machine. It doesn’t create waves from nothing, but acts as a ramp, pushing existing waves upwards and shaping them into better quality surfing waves.
Local surfers say the sandbags need to be adjusted to make this a great surfing spot. The waves are a bit steep and don't last all that long to give a great ride. And, at a cost of $5 million dollars, some are questioning the real value of a project like this.
Then, you have wave pools. They are not just the little ankle biter waves at the local water park anymore. These popular water park attractions are sanitized, regimented revisions of the wild, organic surfs created by nature. In wave pools, the water is chlorinated, the beach is concrete and the waves arrive like clockwork, once every few minutes. They can be turned up or down to increase or decrease the size of the waves.
Many die hards say there is nothing like the real thing but these do make some good alternatives where there are no waves.