Surfing the Poor Man’s Wavepool (Video)
“Slater’s gonna be pissed.”
That’s Ben Gravy talking in his new vlog (see below) about his homemade, truck-assisted, jerry-rigged, plywood-generated “wavepool” in a Pennsylvania swamp.
Yeah, it’s a truck with a wooden foil, driving through a bog, making waves. Hit play.
Gravy got the inspiration from seeing semitrucks driving on flooded roads. As a result, the semis created rebound waves in the runoff water – some almost, maybe, sorta surfable. And so, always the innovative novelty wave maestro, Gravy gave it a try.
“What if I could surf that?” he ponders.
Although, Gravy couldn’t afford a semitruck. (They run about $80k.) And nobody would fund his whacky concept. So, he enlisted his dad to build something that could possibly recreate the same wave-making phenomena as the giant trucks.
Instead, they got a $1,400 truck and rigged a wooden foil to it. With all the hardware and tweaks they made to the truck, they spent about $2,000.
And the result?
Well, it worked. Kinda. They did catch waves, but they did not come close to anything like Slater’s Surf Ranch or any other wavepool currently operating...as expected.
But it’s a wave. And it’s surfable.
Captioning the video, Gravy said:
“Imagine if you will: every surfer's dream come true! Every wave rider I've ever met has always wanted a wave pool in their own backyard. Well, it's been so flat here that we got to the point where we just went ahead & built one! The 2001 Toyota Tacoma came through as the best wave producing sled this side of the Mississippi.”
In the end, Gravy leaves us with this piece of advice:
“No matter how dumb your dreams are, never give up on ‘em.”
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