With the looming election here in Perth how do we loby the pollies to get one of these?????????


From Boardseekmag.com:
You better start getting your boards ready, because the Boscombe artificial reef is getting close to be real.

The past 29th of August, was a day to remember, when the dream of many sailors and surfers got closer to reality. A landmark event successfully took place; the first section of the first artificial surf reef in the northern hemisphere slowly rolled off a barge and was laid on Boscombe seabed. David Neilson from ASR Ltd, the Construction Manager for the Surf Reef said: “This is D-Day. We’ve been waiting for several weeks for the winds to drop and today has provided us with the perfect conditions to accurately place the reef section on Boscombe sea-bed. After years of planning, it’s very exciting to get to this stage. If we have consistently good weather, we should get the reef completed by the end of October.”

So October it is that you will be able to show your wave sailing skills properly on a decent wave, so no excuses anymore! With this new artificial reef in the South Coast providing more waves to sail and surf, chances are that in the years to come we could see some UK windsurfers at the level of the Maui locals.

The first section makes up one sixth of the volume of the reef and is constructed from a geo-mat*, webbing base and 16 huge geo-bags*. It has an area of 50m x 50m.

The first reef section was transported on a barge from Poole to the sea-based construction site at Boscombe, Bournemouth.

The eastern-end of the reef was attached to five-tonne anchors on the seabed by a team of expert divers. The barge was then slowly winched along the reef site, allowing the section to gradually unfold and peel off into the water. Winches then pulled down the reef onto the seabed and SCUBA-divers secured it in place.

The reef is now ready for filling. Each of the 16 bags on reef section 1 will be filled one at a time. This takes between 1-4 hours each, depending on the size. Once this has been completed, section 2 (already built on land) will then be deployed and filled and so on, until the reef is completed when the fifth section is deployed and filled.

To monitor the progress and view regular updates of the reef, visit www.thesurfreef.co.uk

* “Geo” means it is environmentally friendly material

PHOTO CAPTIONS: David Neilson, Reef Construction Manager, The reef construction takes place, Expert diver enters the water.

Naaahhhhhhh

Just get everyone with a boat to go and dump tyres and concrete etc at the same spot and see how it works. Hard to keep it quiet that 30 windsurfers are trying to covertly build a reef....... but I reckon it could be done

Yeah I reckon we just do it
easy to get tyres from the back of a tyre shop (they have to pay for disposal so they'll give you as many as you want) .. bolt 3 or 4 together and dump them every time you go out in the boat.
Concrete slabs, bricks etc etc....

I nominate the failed artificial reef at Cables, just needs to be a bit shallower so dump some rubbish on that one?

I met a coastal engineer who worked for the government. She said they looked at artificial reefs. She said when they build them they have to consider all sorts of safety implications and they have to be made pretty deep (making them ineffective in all but the biggest swells). She said if you wanted a decent reef you would have to build it yourself.

Sandbags are apparently pretty good for artireefs as well???

Haircut said...


they did, and apparently it doesn't do crap most of the time

I guess it depends on how deep the water and reef is. If its only a meter under the low water mark then the reef would probably create a wave in an ankle crusher. However real men need big waves so they probably have it about 10 meters underwater so it creates 5 meter monster waves in big swells.

Clearly putting down tyres is a bad idea and putting down sandbags is a good idea.