Perfecting a Pipe Dream

If professional surfers made as much money as, say, journeyman left-handers who win a dozen baseball games a year, Kelly Slater would have one of these artificial wave machines in the basement of his mansion . . . if he had a mansion.

Heck, what’s a couple million dollars to a pro athlete at the peak of his career?

Tony Hawk would have his own backyard version and so would Steve Klassen, but then world-champion skateboarders and pro snowboarders don’t own McDonald’s franchises or hang out with money managers.

So they all will have to make a landlocked surfing safari to the Queen Mary parking lot in Long Beach this week to get their chance to stay in one place while more than 100,000 gallons of chlorinated water rushes under them at speeds approaching 30 miles an hour.

The Swatch Wave Tour, an exhibition competition involving some of the world’s top board riders, begins today and runs through Sunday. Admission is free and that’s how much it costs sponsors to get the athletes to show up. Six-time Assn. of Surfing Professionals champion Slater isn’t even competing because he sprained his ankle surfing, but he’s in town this week just so he can play on the wave on a body board.

Is a picture worth a thousand words? Probably more in this case. Describing this contraption is not easy. Of course, photographs can lie. Zoom in and frame only the board-rider inside this spinning barrel of water and it looks like another nice Banzai Pipeline surf magazine cover. Zoom out . . . and, well, it’s part Log Ride and part science-fiction.

Slater and the other pro surfers say it isn’t surfing. “You’ve got water rushing under you instead of being on a moving force going over the water,” he said. “It’s almost opposite really.”

Hawk says it isn’t like skateboarding.

Most--with the notable exception of the pro snowboarders--seem to think it’s more like snowboarding because the specially designed boards have no fins and are strapped to the rider’s feet.

“I don’t know if anyone has an advantage,” Klassen said, “and it’ll be a couple of years before anybody’s really trying to win. We’re just having a good time.”

The party started 10 years ago when San Diego attorney and longtime surfer Tom Lochtefeld, the co-developer of Raging Waters water parks, invented this artificial wave--which, of course, isn’t really a wave at all--and patented the technology. Four large pumps shoot water that is only three to four inches deep over a foam-like surface that is shaped like a wave, creating what’s known in the artificial-wave business as “a super-critical sheet flow.”

“I was surfing one day at Big Rock Reef [in La Jolla], watching the water sucking back over reef and I had this epiphany,” Lochtefeld said. “Why not get rid of the garbage? Surfers only need the top few inches of water. So I went home and started experimenting with the Jacuzzi bathtub. I had pipes going all over the place and my wife thought I was nuts.”

But until he actually built a working model, there was no way of really knowing if you could ride on just a few inches of water. So, aided by a carpenter, a half dozen laborers and thousands of sand bags, Lochtefeld dammed the river at Raging Waters and forced the water over a curved ramp they had built and covered with linoleum.

“I knew I really had something when the carpenter, who wasn’t a surfer, was riding on his knees on a body board with no problem,” he said.

Lochtefeld’s company, Wave Loch, installed the first stationary artificial wave called the Flow Rider--which has no tube and a not-so-steep wave face for body boarding--in water parks in Norway, Dubai, Japan, Mexico and Texas, and it’s now in operation in more than 30 parks around the world.

But designing the current model, called the Wave Loch, which features a Pipeline-like tube and 13-foot face and also is transportable, with the help of 40 semis, was another design nightmare. The chaotic turbulence created by water shooting over the foam surface is so complex that it cannot be designed by computer. La Jolla surfboard shaper Carl Ekstrom, who also designs Formula One cars, experimented with 1/24th-scale models until he got it just right, where the water cascades back on itself and creates a perfect cylinder.

And therein--way back therein--is the real attraction for the extreme board set. Tube riding is a peak experience that happens much too fast and much too seldom to be fully enjoyed in the ocean.

“I’m a pretty intermediate surfer and the time I spend in the tube is minimal,” said Klassen, who has ridden Wave Loch in exhibitions in Norway, Munich and Texas. “Here, you get back in the barrel and just watch the whole world spinning around you . . . that’s what keeps me coming back.”

Wipeouts on this wave can be nasty, a little like being flushed down a giant toilet, actually. And when the pros use the wave’s face like a freestyle ramp to perform flips and spins, well, there’s not a lot of cushion in a few inches of water.

But Wave Loch soon will be available to the general public and you won’t have to have an extra $2 million lying around. Wave House, a board riders’ theme park Lochtefeld envisions becoming “the new royal palace of the board-riding lifestyle,” is scheduled to open in July in San Diego’s Mission Beach. If all goes according to plan, the park will eventually include eight artificial waves of varying degrees, retail stores and restaurants.

Right now, however, there is only one such wave on earth, and it sits in the Queen Mary parking lot.

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COMPETING PRO RIDERS:

SKATEBOARDING

* Tony Hawk (Saturday evening and Sunday only)

* Andy Macdonald

* Chris Miller

SURFING

* Christian Fletcher

* Conan Hayes

* Brian Talma

* Beau Emerton

* Bruce Irons

* Luke Ega

* Rob Machado

SNOWBOARDING

* Steve Klassen

* Reto Lamm

* Terje Haakonsen

SKIMBOARDING

* Bill Bryan

WINDSURFING

* Jason Prior

Three Sports in One Ride

World champion skateboarder Tony Hawk describes how riding the wave machine combines the skills of a surfer, snowboarder and skateboarder.

1. ‘The beginning is closest to surfing. Its more like a bottom turn.’

2. ‘As you head up the face of the wave, it’s more like snowboarding because I’m committing to a flip without worrying about the board becoming detached.’

3. ‘Landing is more like a skateboard. Snow is more forgiving...you compress your knees to absorb the landing.’

Comparing boards

How the flowboard* used for the wave machine compares:

FLOWBOARD: 48” long, 12” wide

SKATEBOARD: 31” long, 7.75” wide

SNOWBOARD: 60” long, 11.5’ wide

GUN (SURFBOARD): 7’ to 10’6”

LONGBOARD: 9’ and up

MAKING WAVES

Bruticus Maximus, the wave machine of the Swatch Wave Tour, is the only portable wave machine in the world. Built by San Diego-based Wave Loch, it creates the neverending 10-fot wave that will showcase pro- and amateur riders in Long Beach.

How Bruticus builds the perfect wave:

UNDERNEATH THE WAVE

1. Water overflows from ride, stored in catchpool, which leads to containers.

2. Water enters pump through honeycomb-shaped openings forces water into smaller areas increasing pressure.

3. Water enters reducer, is forced into an even smaller area, increasing pressure.

4. Water sot onto foam surface flows over specially shaped ramps to form wave.

By the Numbers

300,000 Weight in pounds, of empty machine

150,000 Gallons of water needed to run machine

95,000 Gallons per minute when pumps are on

30 Maximum speed, in mph, of water

12 Trucks needed to move machine

7 Days to set up portable wave machine

1 Number of portable wave machines in the world

Catching the Wave

When: Today--Sunday

Time: 1-11 p.m.

Admission: Free, but on a first-come, first-served basis.

Entertainment: On Friday, musical guests Run DMC will perform. Tickets available at participating Swatch stores.

Locals Only

Local surfers ride Bruticus Maximus from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. all four days. Qualifications will be at 3 p.m. Finals at 7 p.m. Sunday.

Pros Only

Watch your favorite pro ride Bruticus on Sunday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Pro finals start at 9 p.m.

Source: Wave Loch, Swatch, Tony Hawk: world champion skateboarer, Steve Klassen: world champion extreme snowboarder, Andy Macdonald: professional skateboarder, Huntington Surf & Sport, Surfside Sports

Graphics reporting by RAOUL RANOA / Los Angeles Times