This Electric Board Lets You Surf Without Waves
In 1966, Bruce Brown released a documentary that transformed the way the world viewed surfing. The conceit of the film was simple enough: Given unlimited resources, you could simply spend the rest of your life chasing the perfect waves around the world — the proverbial Endless Summer.
But what if waves weren’t necessary? What if you could take your surfboard out on the lake and just forgo the trek to the beach altogether?
Enter the Waterwolf MXP 3, an electric surfboard that propels itself on top of the water so that you can surf, no waves required. At first glance, the Waterwolf MXP 3 brought to mind some of the electric skateboards I’ve had the opportunity to ride over the past few years. Really, though, it’s probably more accurately compared to a small boat.
The German-engineered surfboard is, in essence, a board with a giant propeller on its rear. Like a number of the electric skateboards out there, its speed is controlled by a handheld throttle. From the video, it appears that you maneuver it by shifting your weight around, not unlike a regular, “analog” surfboard.
The controls connect via Bluetooth, but there’s also an attached cord for fairly obvious Davy Jones’ Locker-related reasons. The security leash is also there to stop the board in case of the inevitable bail-out. There’s also an LCD display, which lets you know how fast you’re going and how much time you’ve got left on the battery.
The Waterwolf is currently priced at €5,873.94 ($8,030.85) on the company’s site. It’s a lot to pay, given that so many of the electric skateboards on the market are currently priced well below a grand (ZBoard’s most expensive premium model, the SF Special runs $1,119), but, well, a surfboard’s gonna cost you a fair bit more than a skateboard, even without a motor attached. And, besides, $8,000 sounds kind of cheap for what’s essentially a small boat.
As for whether such a thing would ever catch on among hardcore surfers — well, it certainly has potential for prolonging the summer in the off season. But really, perhaps it’s best to think of the Waterwolf as an early entrant in a new space, along with the WaveJet, a system intended to provide a boost to wave riders, whose prices hover around the easier-to-stomach $4,500 mark.
But, hey: As someone who never quite mastered the art of standing up on a wave (though I’m a mean boogie boarder, for the record), perhaps there’s something to be said for a system that lets you start out on a placid lake.
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