MORE ON THE SCIENCE BEHIND KELLY’S SURF RANCH

Putting any deeper philosophical debate aside, there is nary a surfer alive that doesn’t dream of surfing Kelly’s man-made wave at the Surf Ranch. With plans progressing for an eventual East Coast Ranch in South Florida, we all ponder if our dreams will be realized (without the aid of a Golden Ticket, of course) in shorter time than it took for Kelly to realize his. Last week, Science magazine gave us the the most detailed look under-the-hood to date of the world’s most idolized mechanical wave.

Giving back to the surf world is something Slater’s never shied away from. His most selfish gift? The Kelly Slater Surf Ranch. Photo courtesy: Kelly Slater Wave Co.

Putting future accessibility and affordability concerns of the commoner aside for now, the article offers new information to give the lay-surfer some perspective beyond the porn-esque Vimeo clips of the surfing world’s aristocracy delighting in the King’s offering.

We are introduced to Adam Finchman, the PhD aerospace engineer specializing in geophysical fluid dynamics from the University of Southern California who leads the engineering behind the Surf Ranch. Hard to believe that Finchman, a later-in-life surfer hailing from Jamaica, had no idea who Slater was before being approached over a decade ago for the project. Little did he know he would become Kelly’s current-day Al Merrick of sorts, the engineering mind behind the scene that allows the visions in Kelly’s mind to come to fruition.

Finchman figured out how to create the wave that propels Kelly’s dream well beyond reality, then Kelly directed the shape of the underlying ‘reef’ to create the varying rippable and barrelling sections — with intensive supercomputer simulations connecting the dots between fantasy and real-life.

John John Florence putting the pool through its paces at the Future Classic. Photo: Rowland/WSL

We learn the pool itself is 700m long by 150m wide, which is around 140m or one-fifth longer than the Huntington Beach Pier. And the pool is about five times wider than the HB Pier rises above the water. This theoretically offers a maximum ride distance of 715m from corner to corner. Knowing this is not practical, we assume a maximum ride length of around 400-600m factoring in buffers at take off and finishing ends. That’s a ride length of around four to five city blocks, a distance that most of us are highly unlikely to catch at our local break, and around twice as long as the Supertubes section at J-Bay.

A large hydrofoil is pulled the length of the pool along tracks by a contraption the size of train cars, outfitted on 150 truck tires. The foil creates the wave in this instance, rather than catching the wave a la Kai Lenny. Reported speeds of the wave generator are around 19mph which is the deep water wave speed of a 10-11sec period swell.

The track produces a wave in one direction, say a right, then rests until the pool settles before producing a left during the return track back to the start. It is this time in between that appears to be the new engineering hurdle. The settling time is currently a reported three minutes, which works out to a maximum of 15 to 20 waves per hour, not exactly an endless wave-generating machine.

Perhaps some of the most insightful, and equally depressing info, in the article isn’t science-based at all, but financial. Majority owner WSL Holdings doesn’t aim to sell waves on a ‘per ride’ basis, i.e., offering waves to the masses. Rather, they envision the wave pools becoming part of larger entertainment or resort complexes. Kelly himself compares the commercial possibilities to luxury, high-end golf communities, the likes of which are out of reach for all but a select few of the 1%’ers.

So while the Surf Ranch, and its future siblings, may alter the way we view contests and potentially fast-track the progress of unimaginable maneuvers in the sport, it could be another decade before us common-folk have a chance to experience the joy we’ve seen on the faces of the world’s best surfers after their first taste of Kelly’s man-made perfection.

You can view the entire article, “A surfer and a scientist teamed up to create the perfect wave,” by Jon Cohen, online at Sciencemag.org.