The Idea: «UP STREAM SURFING» is a new way of surfing that brings the real experience to your urban area.
What if you could surf in your city any time you wanted to? UP STREAM SURFING saves you long and expensive trips to the sea and allows you to surf in an urban environment.
UP STREAM SURFING is a non-invasive and independent urban surfing system. It is powered by the river’s flow and a little bit of physics to work perfectly, which makes it a very clean and environmentally friendly solution.
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UP STREAM SURFING in der Limmat
Technology
The magic solution is physics! The system diverts the river´s flow by a pulley system that is attached to an underwater sail. The pulley system translates the speed of the surfer and quadruples it compared to the sail’s speed. This enables the surfer to surf for about 300 meters with a speed up to 45 km/h. It is possible to use this system any place where the river is faster than a good swimmer can not handle swimming against the stream anymore (around 5km/h). The flow must be at least 1.2 meters deep and 8 meters wide.
Why we need you
Our dream is to make UP STREAM SURFING widely known and available to as many people interested as possible. We like to give you the opportunity to surf in an urban are, no matter whether you are already a surfing addict or a beginner. Up until now, the transportable system has been tested in different locations in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. As a next step, we would like to create events as well as a regular offer of lessons in permanent locations throughout Switzerland. This requires building a few new UP STREAM SURFING systems.
In order to provide you with the best experience possible at any time, the high quality material has to be checked constantly and replaced if needed. No matter if it is the system itself, the boards or the wetsuits. In addition, we are working 24/7 towards building an even more perfect product and being able to offer you an attractive range of sessions.
Here is a rough overview of the costs over the last two years:
About the creator
The brain of the product, Simon Ra Garben, is a passionate surfer who did an apprenticeship in shipbuilding and later attained a degree in mechanical engineering. If you meet Simon you might think he is German, but wrong! He is originally from New Zealand and has been living in Switzerland almost his whole life, currently in Zurich. He has been working on this UP STREAM SURFING project with all his heart, energy and money for the last two years.
History
Simon started surfing four years back on a roundtrip in New Zealand, his birthplace. As soon as he was back in Zurich and back at his office job, he missed surfing and started thinking about how to create an opportunity to do it in Switzerland. This is how the idea of UP STREAM SURFING grew and finally came to life in the summer of 2014 as a prototype. This gave Simon the motivation to quit his job at the office to work fulltime on UP STREAM SURFING. Today we are already surfing with version 9.0 of the system!
Goal and vision
We want UP STREAM SURFING – the urban way of surfing – to become accessible to everyone –whether you are a curious first-timer or a surfing addict, this technology makes surfing available in your urban area and saves you long and expensive journeys to the beach. And no matter whether you are on holidays or not, Upstream surfing helps you to save long travel journeys. Let surfing become part of your daily life. Does that sound like an awesome plan? If you think so too, then help us make our project happen!
We would like to send a special thank you to Wave Up,Surfzürich and Surfari for their amazing support over the last two years. We would also like to send you a big thank you for supporting this crowdfunding campaign and UP STREAM SURFING!
