He got his feet in the wax very, very quickly. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
The whole wave pool thing has really blown up since the first rideable one showed up. Sure, there were a few before Wavegarden showed the world proof-of-concept in a little pond in the Basque Country, but they never worked well enough to compare with the real thing. Now, 13 years after that little pond spat out tiny, perfect waves, wave pools are getting exponentially better.
Improvements in the waves have brought improvements in performance, too. The only way to learn something is by repetition, and wave pools’ ability to create the same wave over and over and over again makes them the perfect venue to develop new skills.
Out of the modern crop of artificial waves, one of the best of them is the newly-opened Surf Abu Dhabi. Jack Robinson, a guy who cut his teeth on powerful Western Australian waves, decided to check out the other side of the coin, and he is a fan.
“Have you ever seen perfect waves in the middle of the desert? I headed to Abu Dhabi to check out their wave pool setup and see what it’s all about,” he wrote on YouTube. “From fun barrels to playful sections, this spot delivers an unreal surfing experience.”
This video takes the viewer behind the scenes to peer in at the inner-workings a layperson might not be privy to. He talks about the waves and what he thinks man-made ones will do for surfing, and of course, his equipment.
