Photo: @maudfraterman_
Rotterdam’s Rif010 wave pool is easily one of the most unique manmade waves on the planet. While surf parks have been popping up all over the world — many of them centerpieces of larger real estate projects filled with things like condominium complexes, movie theaters, restaurants, and shopping centers — the Dutch turned one piece of their 19th Century canal system into a surfable wave. It’s a true “urban wave.”
Surf Loch is the technology powering the Rif010 pool. If you’re one to keep up with the range of different manmade wave technologies, it’s the tech on display at California’s Palm Springs Surf Club (PSSC) and was used to retrofit the historic canals in Rotterdam for this particular wave. The nuts and bolts of Surf Loch’s tech can be confusing, but in layman’s terms, the company says they create the most ocean-like manmade waves in the game through “intense and precise air management using both vacuum and pressure to create a wave pulse.” That wave pulse then “exits the wave chamber and propagates into the pool where it shoals and forms a perfect breaking surfing wave.” If you’ve watched enough PSSC clips on social media and Youtube vlogs, then you’ve seen it churn out small, almond-shaped barrels and tight little air sections time after time.
That pool, though, is in the middle of the California desert, while Rotterdam sits just south of the North Sea where temps are a tad bit chillier. Last week it was cold enough in the Netherlands that the canals froze over while Rif010 was still churning out some of its waves. Nobody was in the pool surfing but one passerby shared a short video of the frozen waves.
“Due to frost at night, the surfing sessions cannot take place this weekend,” they announced on social media. “The pool is icy, but that creates a special image.”
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