Photos courtesy of CJ Favino
If you don't keep up on all of the wave pool development news, that's okay. This one map, courtesy of Wave Pool Mag pretty much sums up the point I want to make: there are a lot of wave pool and surf park projects happening across the globe.
This is a map of all the known wave pool projects that are in various stages of planning, development, construction, and operation.
Each of these projects is chasing the same thing that Robert August and Mike Hinson were searching for in the Endless Summer... perfect waves.
The trouble is, if you ask 20 different surfers what their "perfect wave" looks like, you are likely to get 19 1/2 different answers.
Some surfers want the biggest barrel the machine can muster, others want a ramping air section, while many more just want a slow, rolling wave for learning to surf on.
Personally, my answer is different than all of them.
I want to grab hold of the control tower and set it to produce the longest, reeling, waist-high point wave that the length of the pool will allow for. An hour of rights, followed by an hour of lefts.
It would be the Two Feet & Firing Hour presented by Almond Surfboards.
Fishes, mid-lengths, longboards—bring whatever you want. Just a perfectly peeling wave and a whole lineup of people screaming down the line, kicking out, paddling back up the “point” and doing it all over again.
Actually, let's make it two hours.
Every day from 10:00 until noon. An hour of rights and an hour of lefts.
A long, waist-high wave would give you enough push to try just about anything in your quiver, without being so consequential that you couldn't try something different on the next one.
Catch a bunch of waves. Swap boards. Trade with a friend. Figure out what different boards want to do.
Then come back tomorrow and do it again.
