Wavegarden dropped the full unveiling clip of the Cove technology today, showcasing something the arms race towards perfect artificial surfing wave has as yet been unable to achieve: a wave behind.

Wavegarden first sent the surf world into a frenzy with their artificial wave technology a couple of years back, which shortly thereafter was — according to pubic opinion anyway — eclipsed by the Kelly Slater Wave Co’s ridiculously perfect barrel machine.

However, Kelly’s Wave Co tubes are very few and very far between, essentially using similar technology to Wavegarden 1.0 (a kind of snowplough on a wire, underwater), the lagoon needs to settle before the next wave can be sent. The Cove boasts waves of differing shapes and sizes, every 8 seconds.

Meaning you don’t shred one, then grow a beard waiting for the nexty.

“It’s like a set of waves that goes for an hour, non-stop,” said WG’s marketing guru, Andy Higgins, when we rang to book our Thursday afternoon office mixer sesh.

Sounds awesome, right? But what about getting caught inside, we chuckled? 1000 waves in an hour would surely be a bummer to take on the head, as Ben Mondy observed.

“The current naturally brings you back to the lineup” Higgins responded with a straight bat, “or you just walk around a jump in, like Medina’s doing in the video.”

Whether or not this means all-out artificial wave wars remains to be seen.

But if the Slater Wave Co (owned by the WSL) goes back to the drawing board and develops an even better, multiple waves per minute capable technology v2.0, well the clear winner is you, the humble surf punter.

Particularly the humble surf punter in the soon-to-be surfing hotbeds of Beijing, Chicago and Moscow!