Last Thursday morning, it was like any other regular morning, running late for work as usual when all of the sudden, when I get to the car, I realized that I had something on my windshield. I proceed to open it and it was an article from La Presse (Wednesday March 10 2010) which depicted a picture of a guy ridding a skateboard (a neighbourg thought it could interest me).

Since I was running late I folded back again and off to work I went. While waiting on the red lights I couldn’t resist to take a sneak peak in it and by the time I arrived work the damage was done…and the article done. Mr. Stephane Champagne (the article’s writer) was very carefull as to use the correct words for the article stating that this new concept by Maeva Surf will offer extreme sports enthusiasts (not surfers), the opportunity to experience FLOWBOARDING…not surfing. This is important to establish since the flowrider is nothing close to surfing, for that matter is way closer to skateboarding or even snowboarding (in my honest opinion I would consider it as a snowboarding on water).

Mr Champagne continues with the article explaining in a general basis how the machine works: high power pumps throw water at 40km/h against a surface, similar to that on a trampoline, creating an artificial wave that can be ridden uninterruptedly. The water layer is around 8cms thick and that represents the first issue with this machine. First of all imagine falling here must be pretty painful: not only the initial hit but after getting dragged against this surface might not be that sexy. Another issue is the board, forget about bringing your well beloved board to this plane…no no no, the boards used here are special finless board that look more like a hybrid between bodyboard and skateboard than a surfboard itself.

Finally towards the end of the article Mr Champagne mentioned that the whole project will cost the investors (Jean Francois Desrochers and Patricia Dupuy) 2.5 million dollars. Wouldn’t be a bit less expensive to invest in a project to build a few waves along the banks of the St Lawrence river??? Waaay less expensive and minimal maintenance.

I think if there are people out there willing to invest that kind of money they should approach us, the surfing community, for some advise.There are already plenty of ideas floating around that just need a little investment to get materialized and will cost a fraction of the 2.5 million dollars estimated for the latter project. In fact if they would like any objective opinion, they should contact us for a closed doors demo rides to get some real feedbacks.

Igor Goni

*Interesting links about this subject:
- La Presse :: Après la chute libre… le surf !
- http://www.maevasurf.com/
- http://www.flowrider.com/
- LAVALTECHNOPOLE :: PDF Document about the flowrider project in Laval

& to have a good laugh!

Cet article a été publié le Lundi 15 mars 2010 à 12:38 et est classé dans Quoi de neuf ?. Vous pouvez suivre les réponses reçues par cet article grâce au fil RSS 2.0. Vous pouvez laisser un commentaire, ou faire un trackback depuis votre site.