I’m learning to surf and I’m also learning to scratch… a lot. Urban beaches are many times polluted. This project would be to build a sunken island in the middle of the ocean. This island would float at a constant shallow depth in selected areas of the ocean identified as being able to generate waves. It would be orientated according to the currents and winds in order to maximize the waves. The sunken island would have the top (floor, from the surfers perspective) engineered so that different kinds of waves would be created. It would also be shock absorbing so that surfers wouldn’t get hurt when falling from their boards. The island would be self propelled and would maintain position using GPS and information from weather satellites.

It would be part of a service that would include transport to the location (and return, of course).
-- PauloSargaco, Mar 19 2004

I don't believe this would work.

Without going into the hydraulics of the surf zone in detail, it is necessary for the sea bed to be firm in order for waves to form. If the island is floating I think it would just wobble about, absorbing the force exerted by the waves rather than providing the necessary reaction to it.
-- stupop, Mar 19 2004


Hmmm, clever point. What about if we included vertical propelers that would compensate wave force. The central command would receive satelite information on the coming waves, activating the different propelers in antecipation of the waves. We could also add or compress the air inside the island so that it would have more or less buoyancy, improving the propelers reaction.
-- PauloSargaco, Mar 19 2004


If you have the money to build this, you have the money to go to Maui. And buy a house. On the beach.
-- bungston, Mar 19 2004


Google for "Saya de Malha", it is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, but at many points just a few meters deep. You may still have to raise it somewhat to get waves. I would envision something like a landfill to achieve this. New York gets rid of its trash and surfers get a new paradise. Its like killing two whales with one harpoon.
-- kbecker, Mar 19 2004


Where there's an artificial reef, there's a lawsuit waiting to happen (again).
-- thumbwax, Mar 20 2004


[kbecker] but surfing over trash landfills beats one of the objectives I was aiming at, pollution free surfing
-- PauloSargaco, Mar 20 2004


[thumbwax] I don't understand this posture that whenever there's an accident someone other than the victim must be convicted. If before the sunken island there was no chance to surf in a certain spot and if people go there to surf, they must be aware of the dangers involved, because the danger is intrinsic to the practice of surf and not particularly to the artificial reef by itself. Same accident would happen in a natural reef, so it's not the nature of the reef that causes it. I'll never understand that kind of judicial system.
-- PauloSargaco, Mar 22 2004


Of course, there is no judicial system in the middle of the ocean. This is good in terms of being sued, bad in terms of pirates taking over your operation.
-- Worldgineer, Mar 22 2004


<obligatory misreading> I misread the title as "Smurf sunken island" and imagined some kind of aquatic Belgian themepark</obligatory misreading>
-- hippo, Mar 22 2004


Theoretically this idea could work. Anyone see the footage/photos of those guys surfing off of glaciers near the South Pole?(Seriously) Of course those things were GIGANTIC under the water. Something like that would be very nearly impossibe to build much less control. On top of all that, who knows what the wave quality would be? Better to buy the house in Hawaii.
-- bigdooky, Jul 09 2004


Build one thousand of these in Kiribasi. The Kiribasi people get their homeland back, and a surf-tourist industry to go with it.

If the islands are hollow and, say, thirty metres deep, then they can also have all the office space, restaurants, hotels, etc. without ruining their "natural" environment.

Now that I think about it, this would draw a lot of scuba divers as well as surfers.
-- Xenophile, Jun 13 2012


There is a collection of almost-islands between Papa Westray and North Ronalday in the Orkneys, known as the Bishop's Pigs. For much of the time, they are between one and three metres under water, and are said to offer some of the finest surfing north of Cornwall.

In fact, the Orkneys have a culture of surfing that goes back at least as far as 1750, and seems to have arisen (amongst the fishing communities in need of some recreation) completely independently of the Polynesian variety.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 16 2012



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