Lake Chelan in north-central Washington state is more than 50 miles of crystal clear, glacier-fed lake surrounded by beautiful vineyards, mountains and small-town charm. This popular summer tourist destination is also home to a variety of family-friendly venues owned by cousins Burke and Robert Bordner including SlideWaters waterpark, High Trek Chalen - a high ropes course, and other entertainment venues. The newest of these facilities is Lakeside Surf – a complete surf facility located next to Slidewaters Waterpark that now operates the world’s largest stationary wave.
“We have the largest and the greatest river wave in the world….it’s 16 meters wide and we can move up to 750 thousand gallons of water a minute,” said Lakeside Surf co-owner Robert Bordner. “This is the largest in the world by width.”
Lakeside Surf has been so successful, it is now the home of the Continental Surf Cup hosted in partnership with Lakeside Surf and citywave International.
Even with such success, a great deal of planning was involved. As the Bordner cousins began discussions regarding this project in 2016, one of the considerations was who to contact regarding the facility’s audio and visual needs. A member of a local church’s tech team referred them to Focus Partners.
“While we serve a lot of churches’ audio and visual needs, we also frequently work with indoor and outdoor arenas and expansive event complexes,” said FOCUS Partners CEO and founder Dave Dartnall. “Lakeside Surf was our first outdoor theme park that included water-oriented sports and activities as well as a broad variety of multi-use zones throughout the complex.”
Focus Partners installed new sound and video production and display systems throughout the venue. Regarding audio, Focus selected Danley Sound Labs as the right fit for the venue.
For Phase I, Focus selected the Danley OS80 outdoor loudspeaker as well as the OS115 outdoor subwoofer along with a Danley DNA 10K4 Pro amplifier with DSP controls to power the speakers. A temporary structure was built for mounting the speakers until Phase 2 construction was completed.
“We chose Danley because they provided the best sound quality, pattern control, and power for expansion,” said Dartnall. “This set up provides simplicity for possible upgrades overtime to more powerful Danley loudspeakers for future venue development.”
Dartnall pointed out that the largest wave doesn’t come without its own set of difficulties from an acoustical perspective: “The pool’s 12 generators move an enormous amount of water and they are not silent. So, above the gentle roar of those generators, people are surprised how well this one set of full-range speakers work. They are consistently impressed by how well music and speaking can be heard and how pleasant and even the sound is even at great distances.”