After years in development, URBNSURF in Melbourne, Australia, and The Wave in Bristol, England, are almost ready to start pumping surf.
After much effort and toil, two new surf parks at opposite ends of the Earth are about to start pumping waves any time now. In recent days both URBNSURF in Melbourne, Australia, and The Wave in Bristol, England, have filled their respective lagoons up with water and are preparing to start testing waves. Both facilities are utilizing the Wavegarden Cove technology.
“Four days. That’s all it took to fill our slice of paradise in Tullamarine,” reports Andrew Ross, Founder of URBNSURF. “The fill started late on a Friday evening, after our dedicated crew had spent weeks testing, inspecting and cleaning our massive, 22,000-square meter Wavegarden Cove lagoon.”
“But by mid-Saturday morning, the channel was already full, and water was spilling over the bank edge of the Reefs (our advanced waves) and into the Peaks (our intermediate waves). By Monday evening the water was lapping the shoreline, and on Tuesday we shut off the valves, and the lagoon was still. Ready for waves,” Ross continued.
It’s a similar scenario in England, where the pumps were turned on a couple of weeks ago and the lagoon at The Wave is now filled and ready for the next steps in the process—which will ultimately culminate with surfers riding waves for the first time.
“We’re going to be adding more staff over the next week weeks, and it’s really encouraging to see ticket sales so strong. It’s exciting,” Nick Hounsfield, founder of The Wave, recently told SPC.
Over the next month, investors and early supporters of The Wave will be among the first to ride it. They’re already accepting bookings for the end of November with some dates sold out.
URBNSURF will be running a promotional campaign using the hashtag #surfitfirst to pick a few luck test pilots for their Melbourne facility.
“Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working closely with Wavegarden to ramp up from ripples, to runners, to reeling tubes. It’s a highly technical, considered process, and it’s not something we’ll rush,” Ross explains. “Once we’ve achieved full-height waves, Wavegarden’s founder and inventor, Josema, will begin loading our wave menu. We’re starting with 16 wave types, ranging from heart-in-your-mouth barrels to peeling pointbreak-style walls, and fine tuning the generator to produce perfect waves, minutes from Melbourne Airport.”
Stay tuned as both of these developments continue to make waves in the surf park space over the next several weeks and months.
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