Wave Loch - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Wave Loch Inc. is a water ride manufacturing company responsible for such water rides as the FlowBarrel and FlowRider in addition to Wave House franchises. The company also founded the increasingly popular board sport flowboarding

Flowboarding

Flowboarding is a late-20th Century alternative boardsport that is an alchemy of board designs, techniques, tricks and culture derived from surfing, bodyboarding, skateboarding, skimboarding, snowboarding and wakeboarding....

History

During the 1980s, Tom Lochtefeld was a partner in the development of Raging Waters

Raging Waters

Raging Waters is the name of three water theme parks located in Sacramento, San Dimas, and San Jose, California. They are the largest water parks in the state of California. The three parks are owned by Palace Entertainment but each contains different attractions...

water parks in the United States. Here he discovered his ambition to build a water park attraction to simulate the riding of waves in the ocean. In 1988, a patent was taken out on the concept of a sheet wave - the basis of most of Wave Loch's rides. After several years trying to model the perfect wave, the first FlowRider opened in 1991 at the Schlitterbahn

Schlitterbahn

Schlitterbahn is a family-owned and operated company based in New Braunfels, Texas, USA. Schlitterbahn began its first park, Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort, in 1979. Since then Schlitterbahn has developed three waterparks located in Texas and one in Kansas City, Kansas.Schlitterbahn Waterparks are...

in Texas. This was followed by the first FlowBarrel at the Summerland Resort in Norway two years later. Throughout the 1990s Lochtefeld then worked with several skateboarders, surfers and snowboarders to develop the best boards and techniques to ride the sheet wave attraction. In 1999, Wave Loch built the first portable FlowBarrel unit which has since travelled around the world.

FlowBarrel

Description

The FlowBarrel is designed to be a perfect tubing wave. There are three different varieties available for different budgets and different capacities: FlowBarrel Five, FlowBarrel Ten, FlowBarrel Ten Double. The main difference between the versions is the theoretical capacity ranging from 160 to 480 riders per hour. Both the FlowBarrel Ten and FlowBarrel Ten Double are only sold as part of a Wave House venture. Despite what model is chosen, a 2 inches (5 cm)-thick wave is pumped at a speed of 30 mph (48.3 km/h) over the fixed, foam-padded surface.

Installations

FlowRider

Description

The FlowRider was Wave Loch's original venture. It features a slightly sloped wave surface that generates a smooth "barrel-less" wave. Like the FlowBarrel, the FlowRider comes in various models: FlowRider Junior, FlowRider Single, FlowRider Double, FlowRider Mobile and FlowRider Wave-in-a-Box. Again, the main differences are capacity and space requirements.

Installations

There are currently more than 100 FlowRider installations around the globe, including seven units on Royal Caribbean cruise ships. A full list of installations can be found on the Wave Loch website. Wave Loch also has a truck-based mobile unit that can be moved.

Bodyboard

Both the FlowBarrel and the FlowRiders use slightly modified bodyboards. The edges have been rounded to enhance manoeuvrability.

FlowBoard

Stand up flowboards are constructed like wakeboards: A foam core wrapped with fiberglass, but with a soft Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA) edge to offer protection. Some flowboards come with footstraps, while some flowboarders prefer to ride unstrapped. Flowboards range in length from: 38 to-; and in width from 280 to-. They weigh between 1.4 and 2.8 kg (3.1 and 6.2 lb).

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.