Kelly Slater Spent a Decade Perfecting This Incredible Man-Made Wave

Although wave pools have popped up from rival companies in several countries none have ever managed to replicate the barrels seen in nature, but Slater’s company turned his vision into reality after a decade of development, drama and secrecy. Obviously, he had to surf it himself for the Slater stamp of approval. Slater’s machine can form waves offering both.

“It was an insane day”, Slater said in a Facebook post. On Friday mornin, the Kelly Slater Wave Company dropped this clip of him surfing a misty artificial wave and, mark my words, the surf world changed forever. “No doubt about it”. Under the famous surfer’s direction, the Kelly Slater Wave Company has been deep in engineering and development for their secret release: an artificial wave park. He’s the king… king of surfing.

Kelly’s wave maker could usher in a new era for surfing as a sport since uniform waves would potentially allow surfing in the Olympics, regardless of location. Never ever. Just make sure you’re not chewing or drinking anything while watching this, okay? “Out here, it’s really hard to get better and the learning curve is really steep because there are so many kinds of variables out there, whether it’s the wind or the waves aren’t super good”, Shull said. 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, nearly two weeks ago.