CHAPTER 1: THE WAVE LOCH HYPOTHESIS

Boardriding -- An Evolutionary Chronology

1950's and before: Longboard Surfing
1960's: Sidewalk Surfing (flat land skateboarding)
1970's: Shortboard Revolution (surfing)
1980's: Vert Ramp Skateboarding
1990's: Snowboarding
2000: Wave Loch

Why the allure?

From an infant's first steps to the conquest of outer space, the drive to harness power and exert control is a cybernetic /genetic imperative...

To stand tall in the eye of the hurricane and overcome humankind's originary Homunculus Complex is our ontogenetic and phylogenetic destiny...

Why the board?

The board is a minimal point of contact with Nature's primordial powerflow; a compact vehicle providing access to the basic wave-like composition of things-in-themselves :

The board is a portal to sublime experience - being-in-control while placing your life in the grasp of a greater force, whether a wave, a mountain, or a concrete jungle...

The board is a flying machine,, a magic carpet - its user is in open exhibition -- near naked in performance of a dance, with survival dependent on the subtle and instantaneous transfer of balance

Why do they come?

Pain and pleasure are but opposite ends of the same stick. This is the essence of the Wave Loch environment, which might bruise you but won't kill you as you feed off the powerflow. Some call it addictive, but is not the air that we breathe and the water we drink?...

World-class athletes are driven by an irresistible compulsion, an urge. A technology that enables the sublime boardriding experience to be controlled and repeated ad infinitum...

Wave Loch...Wave House... the gathering vortex of a future sport. We shall ... Wave the Planet.

CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS WAVE LOCH?

THE FUNCTION

* Wave Loch creates what appears to be a perfect stationary tubing wave. It looks like a wave, but rides like a mountain. Half surfing, half snowboarding, with tricks derived from skateboarding. Powered by ITT Flygt submersible propeller pumps, Wave Loch's scientifically engineered sluice gates generate a thin sheet of water over a stationary, padded fiberglass wave form. The resulting "wave-like" shape permits riders on specially designed Flowboards to slide down, carve a turn, and ride up the simulated wave surface. Variations in the velocity and volume of water provide a wide range of skill and activity levels. Wave Loch has over twenty installations worldwide.

* Swatch Mobile Wave Statistics:

* Wave Footprint: 14 meters X 14 meters
* Wave Max Height: 3 meters
* Pump Power: 4 pumps. Each pump -- 165 kW or 215 horsepower. Total: 660 kilowatts or 860 horsepower.
* Flow: Per pump -- 25,000 USGallons or 94,635 liters per minute Maximum flow: 100,000 US Gallons or 378,541 liters / min.
* Water Volume: 132,000 US Gallons -- 500,000 liters.
* Weight: 1,500,000 pounds or 680,386 kilograms.

* WHAT IS ? ... WAVE LOCH IS...

* A fluid architecture, or HYDROTECTURE, wherein structures and solid forms are drowned under 500,000 liters of supercritical sheetflow

* A recreational device in opposition to certain disembodied attempts at simulation broadly classed as Virtual Reality; producing instead a REAL VIRTUALITY, an intensely physical experience that is "more real than real",

* A NATURE-TECHNOLOGY (Naturtechnik) allowing large-amplitude coherently resonating wave-particle interactions to emerge from turbulent nonlinearity

"The Search is over...He has found the future, who has found Wave Loch."
- T. Lochtefeld

CHAPTER 3: WHO IS WAVE LOCH?

Thomas J. Lochtefeld
Biographical Facts

Age 12 Started surfing - Rode bike five miles everyday to beach.

Age 13 Shaped first surfboard from Styrofoam, rebar and epoxy - Catalyst hole blew into a million pieces on first wave.

Age 15 Met Carl Ekstrom, legendary surfboard shaper and inventor of asymmetric surfboard. Bought an Ekstrom board. Carl is now chief designer and shaper for Wave Loch.

Age 17 Turned down football scholarships at Stanford and Berkeley in order to surf.

Age 19 Achieved personal surfing nirvana but still unsatisfied - Quit surfing for five years - Lived on a commune - Meditated and planned magnum opus.

Age 21 Aptitude in science - Graduated Dean's Honor Roll, Univ. of California at San Diego. However, dissatisfied with writing ability, so enrolled in Law School for discipline.

Age 25 Attended USC Grad for Masters in Taxation - Admitted to California State Bar. Age 27 Developed waterparks to perfect business model.

Age 37 Sold waterpark, sold home and maxed-out credit cards - devoted all resources to conceptualize and patent a new paradigm in "wave pools.

Age 39 Sold first Wave Loch to waterpark with express purpose of "innertube riding. Innertubes did not work but bodyboards did. Curl appeared unrideable. Needed several years to develop the boarding equipment and skills in order to ride the curl.

Age 44 Met Albert Liu, Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Liu is now test pilot and resident Chair of the Wave Loch Academy for Flow Art and Science.

Age 46 Broke hand getting pitched from a 10-foot wave. Three months later went surfing and re-broke hand.

CHAPTER 4:

FUTURE SHOCK AT WAVE LOCH

In addition to the Swatch Wave Tour, here are examples of our other current and future projects...

* 1999 (Sept.) International Surfing Association, organizing body recognized by the International Olympic Committee, will hold trial events

* 2000 (Summer) - First Wave Loch Wave House Restaurant / Surf Park in Mission Beach, San Diego

* 2002 - Brazil River Surf Camp; Taiwan Adventure Park

* 2005 - Wave House worldwide - Hawaii, Florida, Australia, Switzerland, Japan

* 2010 - 30-40-foot monster waves - no theoretical limit to sheetflow technology

Wave Loch...the Future of Nature.