Who hasn’t seen the videos from Kelly Slater’s surf ranch and wished they had one of their own? Ben Gravy sure did, but the difference between him and us is that he did something about it. Using a beat-up truck and a sheet of plywood, Gravy somehow managed to make a (technically) working wave pool in his very own backyard.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, Ben Gravy scouted out a new location for the latest man-made wave. “You may be asking yourself why we’re standing in the middle of a swamp” he says to the camera, “the answer is…Slater’s gonna be pissed.” With that, he set out to make a wave pool to rival anything seen in Lemoore, Waco, or Abu Dhabi.
Inspired by bow waves produced by semi trucks driving on flooded roads, Gravy decided to build an automobile-powered wave-machine. The resulting contraption consisted of a Toyota Tacoma with the bed removed, a snorkel attached, and a giant sheet of plywood bolted to the front. However, the most shocking part of the whole endeavor was that it actually managed to kind of work.
The R&D phase gets a little hairy, with the sled having to get pulled out of the water twice, and almost losing the engine in the process. However, after some trial and error, the swamp-dwelling wave monster managed to produce actual, ridable waves. Sure, they were ankle high, and OSHA might have raised an eyebrow at surfers riding a wave with a mid-size truck bearing down four feet behind them, but the important thing is that Ben made the dream come true
The final cost came out to $1,934, or roughly 3.5 waves at the Surf Ranch. He summed it all up best at the end of the video: “No matter how dumb your dreams are, don’t give up on them.”
