Humor me for a minute. I know there are a lot of costs that go into any given surf trip. From airfare to accommodations, transportation, food, and any number of unplanned expenses, floating around the world to chase barrels gets pricey real quick. It’s exactly why a movie about dudes who rob banks in Los Angeles every October so they can keep tan lines intact and log serious tropical water time the rest of the year was so genius. Bodhi and his crew had life figured out.
But what is an amazing wave worth, really? And I don’t mean in the sappy Mastercard commercial sense where the answer you’re supposed to give me is “priceless.” I mean let’s discuss the actual market value for a wave so amazing the memory of it becomes an indelible shaka-shaped cattle brand on your brain…in hard figures…dollars and cents.
Take Brett Barley’s $3,000, 20-second Skeleton Bay barrel for example. I’m not the one who set the cost of that wave at $3,000; Barley did.
“Upon arrival at the airport, I was denied check-in at the counter, and my dreams were being shattered,” Brett says about his planned trip with friend Oliver Kurtz. “Would it be worth rolling the dice and buying a very expensive replacement ticket to only get there the afternoon the swell started arriving? Should I stay home? Would I make it in time? What if my boards didn’t make it?”
This string of questioning can only matter when something big is on the line, like the potential to find the best wave of your life as the hopeful payout. In the end, Barley forked over three grand and found himself inside the insides of Skeleton Bay for a full 20 seconds. It doesn’t take a life of surf trips to know Skeleton Bay is probably the only place you’re going to find yourself in the barrel for a full 20 seconds. Even with wave pools popping up as fast as Starbucks franchises nowadays, we have yet to see even Kelly tuck into one of his own manmade hollow things for a full 20 seconds. In fact, it was the Surf Ranch itself that set the new market value for wave costs. Earlier this year, the WSL threw this little promotion at the world as a Surf Ranch Experience for the inaugural Founders Cup, wrapped in a cute $10,000 price tag:
“After an entire weekend of watching perfect waves, you’ll get your chance to join the very short list of people who have surfed Kelly’s creation. The Surf Ranch Experience provides a one-hour surf session in the pool on Monday, May 7. You’ll feel like the pros you just spent the weekend watching, with a personalized locker, coaching, and professional photography and videography from both land and water. The experience includes full VIP treatment through the event complete with VIP seating, lounge access, free food and beverage, premium gift bag, parking pass, and Tachi Palace hotel room for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. In addition, you’ll get an exclusive invite to the pre-event party and dinner on Friday, and the invite-only concert afterparty on Saturday. Get ready for the experience of a lifetime.”
Now tell me one thing in that paragraph that stood out to you beyond “surfing Kelly’s creation.”
Yeah, I didn’t think anything else on that list mattered as much as the pool session either.
So now that we’re on the same page, let’s just accept that somebody paid $10,000 for that one perk and all the other fluff was throwaway stuff. Because it was — gladhanding a couple pros, some free food…cool, cool, when do I get shacked?
Let’s do some barrelnomics for the sake of argument here:
The WSL made no indication you’d be surfing alone, so let’s assume you’re not somehow being trolleyed around on a jet ski with your pick of waves as they roll through. Future dad joke expert and fellow staff member of The Inertia, Dylan Heyden, was once invited to Lemoore and surfed the place with just five other people in the water for their one-hour session. Sounds amazing, right? Well, it is, but with 12 waves produced an hour (one every five minutes) and six people in the water, this means you’re alloted two waves in a one-hour session. A Surf Ranch wave has a section that barrels for about 10 seconds. So at $10,000, assuming you’re covered up for the full 10 seconds, you’re spending a cool $5,000 to match the amount of time Brett Barley was inside the Skeleton Bay drainer he calls “the longest barrel of my life,” all thanks to the most expensive ticket of his life. “All the travel. The ticket prices. Whatever,” he said afterward. “This is just priceless.”
So congratulations to Brett. He just saved $2,000 and got a free trip to Africa out of the deal. And he didn’t even have to rob a bank to pull it off.
