Snowdonia Wavegarden

[foamy]

Very short phone clip of Snowdonia. Starting to produce a bit of size. Fk it's fast.
http://youtu.be/hhhtsn42YIc

[swvic]

So is The Flume

You got shares, foamballs?

[carvin marvin]

Very short phone clip of Snowdonia. Starting to produce a bit of size. Fk it's fast.
http://youtu.be/hhhtsn42YIc

Yes it definitely looked like the wave was travelling much faster than the 22kph a wave travels at a beach, maybe it was a test run where they cranked up the motors to full power.

[foamy]

I guess normal boardriding speed is produced by a combination of the speed of the wave and the boardrider's movement across the wave. As you don't really move across these waves, they probably designed a faster moving wave to make up for that.

And no swvic, I have no financial interest in the wave garden. I just got interested in the engineering challenge, gave them big respect for actually producing a big and surfable prototype, and I am now interested to see how it goes financially.
As a profitable business, I reckon the whole thing is a folly of Fitzcarraldo proportions. Almost a sad fable of mad humans and their dreams and the inevitable unravelling. But, I will watch what happens.
It is ironic that the wave garden, which many feel offends their sense of the romance of surfing, will financially fail because the backers had an overly romantic optimism for people's intoxication with wave riding.

[swvic]

I was on a roll last night, foamy. Ignore me

[Drailed]

A redbull sponsored wave pool arena event. I actually feel a little bit sick.


http://www.swellnet.com/news/swellnet-d ... -snowdonia

[138cfh]

Here's a link for a detailed review.

http://community.magicseaweed.com/viewt ... =4&t=43859

Any thoughts?

[foamy]

It does look tricky to stay in the best spot. You can see the energies are quite different to an ocean wave. I guess you would eventually dial it in if you could be bothered. Making you more appreciate ocean waves is not a bad thing. It would be interesting to see if a few sessions sharpened up your surfing down at your local break. The howling wind on the day the reviewer surfed it would have made conditions more difficult. The review was very thorough and good reading.

[foamy]

Oh dear, the Wave Garden has been closed due to an undisclosed technical issue that will require the pool to be drained.

It will be interesting to see how the wave looks when it reopens.
It seems to my ignorant eye that the wave is not quite as good as the concept would allow. Maybe they can tweak it while it is down.
Though probably they are just trying to get the beast up and working again.

[Nick Carroll]

my heart. I can feel it breaking.

[alakaboo]

Didn't the review say that it broke down in the first fortnight?

[crabmeat thompson]

the future of surfing!!

[ctd]

Let he who has never broken down cast the first stone.

[el rancho]

I was on the breakwall looking out over Dbah today and watching as the swell would slide past the massive boulders I was perched on and send spray into the air. A couple of waves actually shook the enormous structure slightly, I could feel it. It was like, oh shit these waves carry a real lot of energy in them.

It was then I thought to myself, we've got a pack of 'surfers', which used to mean people who completely and definitively cared about the ocean and the environment, we've got a bunch of these people who want to burn an absolute colossal fuckload of energy and fossil fuel in order to create a really third rate version of something we get totally for free.

[crabmeat thompson]

ding, ding, ding!

we have a winner.

[foamy]

Sure, I agree, but then there are the waves available in Wales.
The Goldie, easy waves on tap, quite good, in warm water and on sandy bottoms.
That's why it is so crowded.
Surfing in Wales, that's hardcore. Maybe they need a break every now and then.

[godsavetheking]

No that's wrong foamy. Our waves are miles better than the wavegarden. But I strongly believe that they aren't looking to attract people away from coasts in any significant volumes or with any great frequency and instead are going after the inland surfer who is happy to drive for a few hours to spend time and money surfing breaks about which they have no knowledge so more often than not end up surfing in the worst possible conditions. For these people, a 100 yard 'green' ride is an impossible pipe dream yet here's surf Snowdonia offering just that and with only two other people out there to boot. According to Surfers Against Sewage research there are 50,000 such inlanders who identify as surfers, so maybe they'll get the numbers to make it work. Doubt it though

[alakaboo]

Those SAS guys talk a good game but they reek of unmitigated bullshit