The Perfect Wave Fuels Dreams

In 1963, the Beach Boys had a No. 2 hit with their song “Surfin’ USA”: “If everybody had an ocean / Across the USA / Then everybody’d be surfin’ / Like Cali-for-nigh-yay.”

The lyrical fantasy of 1963 is now coming true, as world surfing champion Kelly Slater and his team at Kelly Slater Wave Co. have done what many thought was impossible. They’ve artificially engineer the perfect wave.

All of a sudden, surfing is no longer limited to athletes who were blessed by their geographical proximity to sea, and this has important implications for the sporting competitions and promising athletes around the world.

Using the magic of technology, Kelly Slater Wave Co. has unveiled the kind of wave the ocean needs massive storms and thousands of miles of wind, current, continental shelf and reef to produce: A head-high, long, fast, challenging, hollow, perfect wave. This is the kind of wave surfers would spend thousands of dollars in travel halfway around the world to ride.

Now, the perfect wave will be available for a price, across the USA, and anywhere the world.

When Slater revealed his pet project on his Kelly Slater Wave Co. Facebook page in December, the surfing world was instantly mesmerized. In the prototype, Slater rides the “perfect” wave for almost a full minute. At a reported 15 miles an hour, that’s a quarter of a mile a minute — a very long wave.

Within four hours, the Facebook video had 250,000 views, and in four days, over 4 million.

Slater revealed his thoughts on his personal Instagram:

“I’ll be sharing more details in the coming weeks and months but I can’t wait any longer to share a film of my experience surfing the wave for the first time, almost two weeks ago. It was an insane day. I’m still a little in disbelief, and trying to process how much fun this wave is, but it certainly feels like this is going to change a lot of perceptions about human-made waves. Can’t wait to see other people surf it soon and show what is possible on this thing.”

Slater strategically declined to share the location of the man-made wave machine, but he revealed that the wave was 110 miles from the nearest ocean. Clever Internet sleuths suggested the location might be the Lago del Sol, in Lemoore, California, a rectangular, recreation lake and water ski course close to Fresno but far from prying eyes. A wave potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars is being hidden away in the middle of all that rich agricultural farmland, where water is good as gold.

The message: If they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.

The company’s website offers no additional information, other than the stunning visuals and Slater’s thrilled reception when he took the first ride. Many questions beg for clarification, but the implications are clear: Slater and his team have created a perfect wave that is a moveable beast — scalable and available to anyone, anywhere. For recreational and professional enthusiasts alike, the barrier to entry for anyone interested in surfing — that is, location — will soon be eliminated.

One of the world’s most exclusive sports is coming soon to a water park near you. As long as the technology is proven reliable, Kelly Slater Wave Co. is positioned to sell wave machines around the world and this promises to open the sport of surfing to audiences who never dreamed it was possible.

Make no mistake: The American Dream — and the California dream, more specifically — is alive and well.