An image from Webber Wave Pools website of a tasty left, and the man himself.
With the announcement yesterday that the Gold Coast had edged a step closer to becoming the home of a Kelly Slater Wave Co wave park, the prospect of mechanical perfection (away from the ocean) was again on surfer’s minds. For a further insight into the technology and possibilities on offer we figured whom better to speak with other than Mr Greg Webber of Webber Wave Pools.
There’s been a healthy rival between the two camps and as Greg points out in the interview below, that’s not a bad thing.
What are your thoughts on the exclusive memorandum of understanding announcement for a Kelly Slater prototype wave park at Maddison Estate on the Gold Coast?
I’d have to see the details first, but my initial reaction is good! It’s great for the whole industry and I think there’s room in the global wave pool industry for a 100 Kelly’s and 100 Greg Webber’s so I don’t think there’s going to be a problem.
What about the location specifically, if you think of Australian tourism for example, and where you’d want to put a wave pool, the Gold Coast is a good spot?
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good spot.
Do you now focus on Sydney’s West or Melbourne for example?
Well, we’ve got a whole lot of sites all over the place, so we’re not thinking about our first pool being an individual pool. We’re thinking about a complex that involves much more than just one pool – and I don’t really want to talk too much about that just yet. But, I can say our business plans are quite broad. So, I think it’s great if one pool comes out – it makes a lot of sense to build a ‘proto type’ to see whether it’s working. These are the things that have to be established with any new technology. I hope they’ve got their ‘proto type’ working well! It may work but can it work to scale? With his name attached to it – it had better work!
Are you happy with where your design and technology is? Is it all locations and logistical planning now? Are you sticking to the single hull theory?
There’ll be two waves per hull on the crescent design we have. But there’s no fundamental change to the wave making technique. But we will probably extended beyond that now – at the moment that’s in house – basically without giving away any detail on the hull and pool outline (I won’t talk about the pool outline) – the technology and the wave making is identical, the actual shape of the pool is different, but it’s much more to do with the wave rate. We’re focusing on an area that has probably been a little bit ignored to date. I probably shouldn’t say much more that that.
Can we be excited that a wave at a Webber Wave Pool its s not going to be one systematic peeler, are we going to get sections?
That’s part of it, but I think mainly these things have to succeed as a business. Otherwise the investment’s not going to be justified. It’s not just draw card potential, it’s not even events that are going to justify the investment; it’s the ability to have a lot of people happy at one time. If that’s not possible because your wave rate is low – like 60 waves per hour – then you’ll go bankrupt, like most wave pools have. If it’s 250 waves per hour you’re starting to get there, but Colin, I’ll give you a bit of a rundown, if you’ve got 250 waves an hour, and a good session for a surfer is ten waves an hour, that’s 25 guys an hour getting fulfilled! How can you justify a complex worth millions of dollars if only 25 guys an hour are going through that complex?
Would the analogy of needing a certain numbers of people on a ski slope at one time for a run to be successful be apt?
That’s right. Okay, for a wave pool it’s all condensed down to that one little rate – and if your wave-rate is even as good as we had, that’s still not enough. We’ve improved that wave rate many-fold. That’s what our focus of the last six moths has been – to completely blow the doors down in that area.
We should be talking about wave rate above everything else.
A sneak peek at future possibilities.
Difference between sink or swim for a wave pool business?
Entirely. Can you imagine a guy going to a wave pool going, “What the fuck, there is 100 guys in front of me, and it’s 25 waves an hour? I’ve got four hours? To wait for my one wave?” No one’s going to do it! If it leaves you thinking you wouldn’t want to come back every week it won’t work – no way.
The future will be not only in wave quality, but the ability of that wave riding technology to offer huge numbers of rides per hour per pool. And then the final point is the wave-rate to surface-area. So, it’s wave-rate per hectare. Does that make sense to you?
It does. The amount of land required to produce certain number of waves?
If you want to get a higher wave-rate, and you say, “That’s cool, to get the same wave rate, we’re just going to make more pools!” Or the pool design is so limited you have to have ten pools to equal the one pool of your opposition, then you’ve used the entire complex up and you’re going to have to have a three minute bus ride to get from one side of the complex to the other. So that is the final currency.
The equation for a successful wave park?
It is. It’s the currency that’s not that known. Wave-rate is the new currency in this field that matters. We talk about it in the ocean as frequent or infrequent, but when you’re charging people it’s gotta be a low price per ride, and then you’ve got to have a huge number of people go through – and then the whole thing works. Making one perfect wave, no matter what the technique, if you’re not making well over 250 waves an hour, you’re going to fail.
Keep the surfers and invested happy…
That includes me too. If we can’t get over 250 then you’re going to be in trouble… or at least some part of that complex has to have a wave rate well over 250 waves per hour per pool. And if you’ve got another pool down the end of the complex making perfect two meter barrels and it’s only one wave every 30 seconds that’s fine. You can only get one of those waves, but you can get ten of those other fuckers. You create session within an hour of absolutely incredible fun – to do that you gotta have a bread and butter (wave), an in-betweener and an all-time barrel.’
Another look at possible wave-rate creating options.
Right.
It’s not one wave pool! It’s never going to be one wave pool. It will be a complexes that involve fulfilling a broad range of people all the time.
Get you fill on the smaller more frequent less quality wave and then pull up a pew and wait an hour or whatever for a shot at the big one!
They’ll be quality! They’ll all be mechanically perfect, whether I make them, or they (Kelly Slater Wave Company) make them. That’s just what happens when you engineer something. Only the wave height will be any less. They’re going to pick up on it; they’re going to hear these words and go, “Is this true? Is this so important?”
It’s not about making one wave pool.
Once you’ve completed your own testing is your plan to pop up all around the world, not just in one location?
Probably [said with a Cheshire grin I can see through the phone line].
Thanks a lot Greg.
For more details on both companies:
