KNOWvember: Day Twenty-Nine - The Surf Ranch

​In the 1966 classic film The Endless Summer, documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown follows surfers Michael Hynson and Robert August on an around-the-world surfing adventure to find the perfect wave.
 
Since then, surfers of all calibers have made this a life goal. Many have scoured the islands of Hawaii, trekked the beaches of South Africa, Thailand, and England all in search of the perfect wave.  And just like in the movie (spoiler alert) even the best scientific tracking tools can’t guarantee that those waves will be there or perform as they hope. But there was one place they didn’t look. And that was inland. You read that correctly. Not island, but inland. Like 110 miles inland from the closest beach.

​Welcome to The Surf Ranch, “The first of its kind, an immersive surf lifestyle experience in the middle of farm fields in Central California.”
 
The Surf Ranch was the brainchild of 11-time world champion surfer Kelly Slater who realized it would be easier to make the perfect wave then trying to find it. 

​(Fun Fact: I surfed with Kelly when he was a kid. Although he was six years my junior, his style caught my attention enough to paddle next to him and strike up a conversation. We'd battle it out, wave after wave, for the rest of the day. He was highly competitive then, but super easy going.)

Like so many before him, Slater has been dreaming about this wave since surfing in an artificial wave pool in Texas when he was 14 years old. In 2015, that dream became a reality, when he shocked the world with an Instagram video of him ridding a perfectly crafted wave in the middle of nowhere.

Now let me paint the picture for you. Nestled between Los Angeles and San Francisco is about 250 miles (north to south) of farmland. Beginning at the Pacific Ocean, this land stretches eastward for what I’d guess to be 200 miles until it hits the Sierra mountains. Roughly 2/3 of the nation’s food supply is grown on this piece of California.

​From strawberries and grapes to kale and broccoli, or pistachios and almonds to poultry and beef, if it’s in your refrigerator there’s a good chance it came from here. What’s not farmed is mined for oil and other natural resources. The terrain is green, and dusty, and mountainous, and rugged, and hilly, and windy. The area is so enormous that the three major highways that cut through it barely show up on satellite photos.

It's safe to say, the Surf Ranch is the literal Field of Dreams for surfing. It was an idea born from a vision and sketched out on the back of a napkin. In 2006, Slater learned that the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering conducted a pilot study “to look into the fundamental phenomenon of shallow water waves.” And within a year, he founded the Kelly Slater Wave Company “with the goal to create a self-reinforcing solitary wave that maintained a constant shape and velocity, essentially creating the perfect, man-made wave.” That was 2007.

By 2009, a 1:15 scale model was built producing 4-inch-high waves. And by 2015, “the full-scale prototype was completed at Surf Ranch, delivering 8 foot high barreling waves.”
 
But in order to make this dream a reality, the wave pool would need no less than five acres of land to operate on. While other surfers flew around the world chasing after then next best wave, Slater looked in some of the most unexpected of places, including Lemoore, California where he bought a chunk of land about 3 hours north of my house.

​Per the internet, I learned the testing site is about 2,000 feet long and 500 feet wide. While the original artificial lake was built for water skiing, Slater saw its potential and turned it into a premier site for surfing man-made waves. Because of its location in the middle Central California, the Surf Ranch is able to operate year-round “and can be surfed at any time thanks to the unique supercomputers that output ocean-like waves regardless of weather and wind conditions.”
 
At the time, the pool created barrel waves that lasted for 45 seconds. As far as the public knows, the Surf Ranch produces 15 waves per hour, meaning that any surfer who visits could expect to catch around 120 waves in a day if they hit every wave.
 
As one of my childhood surfing idols, Gerry Lopez, describes it, “Kelly has created the quintessential perfect wave. And to be able to get that over and over again is really going to push the envelope of surfing like it’s never been pushed before.”   

 On his now infamous Instagram post, Slater wrote, “For nearly ten years, my team and I have been working on creating the first truly world-class, high-performance, human-made waves. Through rigorous science and technology, we’ve been able to design and build what some said was impossible, and many very understandably never thought would actually happen.”
 
In a video announcing the breakthrough, Slater called it the best man-made wave. “Seeing that, I’m 100 percent sure our team has built the best wave ever made. It’s a freak of technology. I’m still a little in disbelief, and trying to process how much fun this wave is.”  

​It’s the ultimate “build it and they will come” mentality brought to life. While the Surf Ranch is a bucket-list surf destination for any surfer, it’s only for a select group of people – those who are lucky enough to be invited, and those rich enough to ride it. On the upside, you get a single, long ride that can last up to 45 seconds without anyone cutting you off. Although that is a priceless offer, what I found online suggests even a single wave at the Surf Ranch is way out of my budget.
 
One writer calculated, “The costs depend on the deal that you choose, though you're typically looking in the ballpark of $10,000 for the "Surf Ranch Experience." This number includes the premium tier experience and a booking fee. Every wave cost around $450 on average, according to various sources.”
 
If I had money to burn, I’d burn it here. Surf by day, eat farm to table cuisine at night. Rumor has it, you can book the entire wave pool facility out for the day, which depending on the season, could set you back somewhere between $35,000 to $50,000. “Breaking down the cost even further, you are looking at spending anywhere from $290 to $415 per wave.”
 
With gas prices the way they are right now, hitting the beach on a constant basis is too expensive for me. So, it’s back on the couch with my Bruce Brown collection of surf DVD’s  - a gift given to me by an old and very dear friend Pat Carroll who has never surfed a day in his life but has the most beautiful long board hanging on his wall. A board that looks like it was made for an Endless Summer.

​A time line of sorts:
​
In 2006, “A pilot study is conducted at the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering to look into the fundamental phenomenon of shallow water waves.”
 
In 2007, the Kelly Slater Wave Company was founded.
 
In 2009, “A circular research tank powers KSWC's first experiments,” using a 1:15 scale model to produce 4-inch-high waves.
 
In 2012, “The company conducts years of rapid prototyping and cataloging of wave science. Numerous patents are issued protecting Kelly Slater Wave Systems technology.”
 
In 2014, “A small KSWC team give everything to realize the first full-scale prototype in Lemoore.”
 
In 2015, “the full-scale prototype was completed at Surf Ranch, delivering 8 foot high barreling waves.”  “Kelly verifies the quality of the wave on his first ride. The Kelly's Wave video goes viral.”
 
2016, “Kelly invites friends to test the wave and give feedback. Taking feedback from friends and pros, KSWC designs and implements 2.0 system upgrades, providing a dramatic improvement over the original prototype. The perfect wave got more perfect, and what was at first only a right is now also a left. Gerry Lopez visits Surf Ranch to surf the first left breaking wave.”
 
In 2017, “Surf Ranch hosts its first of many World Surf League sanctioned events.”

Kelly Slater Wave Company
centerforsurfresearch.org