Mt Maunganui Reef

[libby]

www.mountreef.co.nz

[surfishlife]

Oh wow...looks like they put research money to good use! Brilliant.

Next thing you know, people will be able to major in sport development, in uni, with an emphasis on surfing. Pretty sweet.

[essex sucks]

that looks well good

[Dec]

I wonder where you got the idea to post his thread?

[FishKid Wales]

I wonder if the proposed bournmath 1 will break as nice as those piccys

[Phil]

not a chance you still need waves for the reef to work

[Broosta]

Good work ASR !

[tomcat360]

Uh oh, I'm feeling a Roy Stewart intervention....

[fng]

Time to book a trip back.
Might not make it to the south island after all....

[libby]

No you HAVE to make it to south island! I demand it!

[Brent]

ok, sober up time. big night in pub. sea this thread - gotta reply.
much of those photo's is smoke mirrors & clever camera angles people. sorry. we had 2 days swell on the thing since last work done. best day was last tuesday evening & wed morn. Marginal for surfing. too hard for most surfers & the window of working proper is several hours either side of low...with low proper being almost dry. (40cm deep). late wednesday swell reached 13-14 sec period & and it was dry/suckout between waves.
good for lids however (bless their gutslider hearts).

remember the dudes running that site are the dudes who are not objective & want to talk the job up. i'll write a decent speel on a day or so here.

everyone here is reserving judgement until cyclone season begins next month or so.

[Brent]

Morning all. Ok a decent take on this thing from someone who can see it from his house, worked in fundraising, has used it & snorkelled all over the thing.

1st up, at this stage it's not as good as you think. Almost all of the web based info you'll see is generated from either ASR who are very good at self promotion because they are off chasing huge contracts offshore for wave pools etc and they're trying to maintain credability. And secondly the web site above is partially targeted at further sponsors in the attempt to get more money to finish the current project and pay for monitoring work when done.

The project was very mis-managed from the start, I guess the lesson learned with this for us all is if you do get a large group of enthuastic & excited surfers together & start fund raising for a reef is to employ a proper project manager - one who does not surf, who is not emotionally involved with the end result and with an engineering background. Sure you'll have to pay them a salary while they work on it...but you'll get a proper, well-resolved plan of installation that'll not waste a fortune. In our case I thing we wasted about, maybe 100k or more.

They started laying the thing about this time last year & only got one side down in the water, the bags were pumped about 70 % full on the left hand side of the arrowhead and then a series of gear failures & inclement weather (the cyclone season begins here bout Nov) basically caused endless trips out to pump with nothing happening...meanwhile the divers & staff (bout 12 at a time) all have to be paid...I call this bad project management & wasted a fleshin fortune. If they'd done it all March-May they'd have got the thing done in one go & fully complete.

Anyway, the above stalled the project for almost a year due to running out of money.

Next up several local organisations funded the rest of the money, and when they went out to lay the second side of the reef (the right) on the seabed in September the whole bathymertry of the seabed had changed (due to the currents & eddies caused by the half build reef on the other side) and there was work to be done there to re-expose the sea anchors to hold the nylon lattice to the sea floor.

Luckily they did get several weeks of almost totally calm conditions & got the whole thing laid & almost pumped full. There is only some minor work to do on the right at the head of the thing, and the semi covered with sand left hand side needs a grunty swell to clear off sand so they can completely fill that side....but I can't see this happening anytime soon as cyclone season starts soon & all the goodwill they had with using a particular local company for their divers & hardware has almost gone due to stuffing them around & exhausting their divers working 12 days straight doing long hours in the water.

Anyway - so what's it like.

Well, it's a reef. It's an arrowhead shape facing out to sea, it's at lowest astronomical tide about 16 inches under the water and is made from what looks like huge sewn carpet sausages tied to a nylon webbing secured to the sea floor pumped full of sand. floating over it with a mask & snorkel it looks like huge pork sausages. The cool thing is sea life is all over it, within days of the second side being laid shellfish were adhering to it. There is crayfish & all sorts in the crevases & fish too.

It does work for surfing although in truth at the moment it's such a critical takeoff & fast wave that most cannot surf it properly at this stage, perhaps when the head of the thing is fully pumped and sand builds up on the seaward side of it it'll mellow out the takeoff. It's a good lid wave however. At this stage we've not had any serious swell on it to really see this engineering masterpeice in action, that'll come in a month or so.

I'll fill you all in when things start happening....

Meanwhile I remain open minded on the whole thing. It was a perfectly good & somewhat shifty beachbreak before...and as Roy commented this thing has changed the whole bathymetry of the coast nearby. And not for the better. We'll see.

cheers. B

[tomcat360]

Sounds like a lotta the construction I see....


But very curious, what does it feel like when you get thrown into the reef? Soft? Sharp? etc...

[Brent]

Good question.
The left which has been in the water for about a year is now completely encrusted in marine life and looks like an oddly shaped natural reef, it is covered in weed & small shellfish with crayfish & fish in the areas between each bag and is not something you'd bodyslam for fun. It's be painful.
The new right side which has been in the water in total now for about 1 month feels like rough carpet underfoot (it's made of geotextile material) and was quite comfortable to run around on at low tide (water about 16 inchs covering it's surface) at first, but it's now changing colour as it gets encrusted and there are shellfish adhering to it, more so each week - it's an amazing process to watch. Nature claiming it as it's home.

I'd not bodyslam it for fun now. Although in the first week yes.

Actually it's funny watching Lidders, at dead low tide they stand on it at the outer end& when a wave approches they run along the top of the outermost bag & jump into a swell as it catches up with them & ride it along the bag's outer edge.

[fng]

No you HAVE to make it to south island! I demand it!

Okay, okay but first I would like to spend some time kiting around Maunganui and a good week or two working my way around Taranaki (I got one half of an easing tide that created steep close outs - very unsatisfying) after coming down the coast.

Brent, I'm sorry to hear about the project woes. That is the kind of deal killer for projects in other locales that is hard to overcome.
Do you have any underwater shots of the reef maturity cycle?

[Brent]

No but I do believe on the website listed above there is video footage.

I don't think it's a deal killer though - I just think when you're doing real engineering work (and this is 5000 cubic meters of sand pumped from floating dredges into big bags) you need to think about your methodology properly & plan - rather than rip, xxxxx & bust as us kiwi's say.

I think if these reefs are going to be created in more consistant swell sites you somehow need to pump from land or something, somehow work with smaller bags & build it like a lego reef or something. The floating barge & pumping system has too many failure prone links in the chain, is too weather dependant & too expensive 6-12 guys getting paid good money mostly standing around...

The proof will be in the pudding I guess. The first decent swell you'll hear all bout it from me...

[WATMEWORY]

hey brent whats been happening with the mount reef? a bunch of guys want to get one up at bondi, paris hilton and an ad guru r gonna pay for it to be built to launch a new brand of condom.

seriously though is it breaking properly as it is meant too when there are good swell?

ive bin chekin tha webcam and so far not really impressed for the $$$ spent

[libby]

I'd PM him i'm not sure whether Brent is still checking the forum out or not.

[RJD]

I think its had one good day since it was finished, mostly seems a poor faliure

[Brent]

Just saw this & better post I guess.

Hi all :-)

The reef is almost complete, the problem now is we're in el-nino hell at the moment, grinding off-shore winds since September have destroyed the normally good cyclone season here, by this time normally we've had 8-11 groundswells from them. Any swell is being hammered by a fetch of 2000ms or so of south west winds heading straight off-shore. We've had several days of good conditions all summer.

The reef is like almost all natural ones faced with these conditions; natural sand being transported around by the gentle shorebreak currents etc has build up all around it making what was an abrupt structure little more than a artifical mound on the sea floor at this time. This means what little & weak swell that actually finds it's way here cannot "stand up" and focus on the head of the structure and rifle down it's edges.

I think this happens yearly on the north shore of hawaii (especially at pipeline?) the outer reef need a fleshin big groundie from the west to blow off the sand & work tidily. It gets better as the winter season progresses. That's what mates tell me anyway...

I have had several good surfs on the left in a groundswell we had here for most of last week, I see the real potential and the wave really does suck out & throw a serious lip...but I cannot make an objective judgement call until I see a serious storm here and then the first real ground-swell with a 10 plus second period coming straight on.

Actually there's a bad-boy "T" brewing out about 150 degrees east at the mo. maybe 3-4 days away at present. I'll post when I have more to report...