The world of wave pools is booming. Amid manmade wave lagoons popping up everywhere from Australia to Europe to Brazil to California and beyond, synthetic surf spots are steadily on the rise, and they don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
And one of the latest? RiF010, a new wave-making operation out of Rotterdam, Holland, currently undergoing testing, but already producing tubes in an ancient canal smack dab in the streets of Rotterdam, as evidenced from the sneak peek (or peak) clip above.
Per the latest dispatch from RiF010, which shows a righthander peeling within the concrete canal structure, “The waves are really moving in the right direction and the water is getting cleaner. We continue testing hard until we have made the perfect wave, more to come!”
So, what’s fueling this Dutch canal, and its municipal wave-making operation?
It comes from SurfLoch, the same folks behind the Palm Springs Surf Club. But in this case, as opposed to a retired waterpark, it’s location is in a Dutch canal. According to SurfLoch:
“We create ‘swell’ from intense and precise air management using both vacuum and pressure to create a wave pulse. This wave pulse exits the wave chamber and propagates into the pool where it shoals and forms a perfect breaking surfing wave.
“The characteristics of each surfing wave are determined by the way we energize it & the bathymetry of the ocean floor. This results in the most ocean-like surfing waves of any surfing technology.”
And when will this Rotterdam wave be available to rip? Soon. Project organizers are eyeing an opening in early July.
For more on the operation, and what to expect, here’s one of the founders Erik van Ettinger, speaking to WavePool Mag:
“We are going to make waves which are identical to breakers found at shoreline. I cannot go into too much detail because it’s confidential, but the waves will have the same behavior as those found at the beach. [Other pools] are making waves, which, according to theory, you would see in the middle of the ocean and they are putting them in shallow water. Yes, they are ocean waves, but just not the right type of ocean wave. We are making waves similar to waves you would find in the surf zone.”
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