Kai Lenny plows over a wave at Red Bull Heavy Water in San Francisco.
Two miles off the coast of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach not far from where the powerful currents of the bay pour into the Pacific Ocean under the Golden Gate Bridge, a beacon in the water is collecting hyper-local data about the ocean in preparation for a major event.
At Red Bull Heavy Water, an extreme paddle boarding event that will take athletes later this month over white-capped waves, under the bridge where currents will attempt to push them out to sea and around jagged rocks piled onto the western coastline, data about course conditions will be transmitted via satellite to people ashore who will then build interactive 3D course maps for athletes and fans.
The data, a first for a Red Bull Heavy Water event, will give athletes, such as pro-paddle boarder Kai Lenny, and spectators information about what’s going on above and below the surface. That includes everything from a heat map of wave height and direction to current strength and visual GPS data. Leading up to the event, athletes will use this to study the course in preparation for competition.
“Technology has always played a huge part in what I do because without it I wouldn’t even be able to physically ride some of the conditions I’m in,” Lenny said in an interview with SportTechie. “As an athlete it would be a huge help to understand the unknown data. Being able to just adjust training or even a game plan after knowing what’s happening gives you a little head start.”
Kai Lenny and Connor Baxter compete on Ocean Beach
The companies fueling this experience for the Association of Paddlesurf Professionals (APP) World Tour are startups Spoondrift and Mapbox.
Spoondrift has developed a low-cost, solar-powered ocean wave-current tracker called Spotter to democratize the collection of ocean data, which it says has previously been expensive to gather and a novelty of large institutions and government agencies. The company collects ocean data from a series of sensors that stretch 15 inches in diameter and are dropped into the ocean from small Zodiac inflatable boats then anchored to the ocean floor.
With sensors all around the world, it uses state-of-the-art models to better monitor and predict local wave heights and characteristics more accurately and localized than, say, Surfline, according to Spoondrift CEO Tim Janssen.
While it has been leveraging modern technology to make ocean data available to coastal communities, marinas and harbors, this is its first official venture into sporting events.
Spoondrift drops a beacon into the ocean to monitor conditions.
“Golden Gate is a peculiar place. It has a big base (the Bay region) and a narrow inlet. With tidal elevation changing, you’ll have entire Bay Area flushing water out to the Ocean, which causes massive currents,” Janssen said. “By combining observations in real time with a real-time nowcast model, we can capture those variabilities pretty well to help participants understand what they’re going to run into it.”
Mapbox will then visualize this data through interactive maps. A real-time location and mapping platform that counts Strava, the National Park Service, Weather Channel, CNN, National Geographic, Github and Airbnb in China among its clients, Mapbox will contextualize the data by placing it on a dynamic ocean map at the event alongside a live leaderboard.
Red Bull will also repackage the data for post-production content to give consumers footage from the race alongside contextual data. The post-production for this event is crucial since the race will take place in a window between Oct. 16 and Oct. 31, dependent upon wave conditions, which makes it difficult for spectators to watch in person. The 7.5-mile race from Ocean Beach just past the Golden Gate Bridge won’t even kickoff until waves are more than 10 feet high.
As athletes such as Lenny push over white-capped waves twice the size of them, spectators will be able to get immediate access to the exact height of the wave and the force of the current, giving them an understanding of what Lenny is dealing with as he pushes over the crest.
“Spectators walk away understanding how location matters to these events,” Sam Kronick, manager of Mapbox’s Labs Team, said. “There are all kinds of really cool adventure sports events that are all about the location. It’s not just about equipment and athletes but how they interact with the world around them.”
Spoondrift analyzes data from its ocean sensors
Replays of the event will go a step further by integrating geo-tagged video, images and other data embedded into the map experience to take viewers on an intense journey through the course at the most crucial moments from the athletes’ perspectives.
Tristan Boxford, CEO of the Association of Paddlesurf Professionals (APP), said the technologies allow APP to “tell a much more comprehensive story” of the race. For athletes, it means spectators will finally get a sense of the extreme conditions they face.
“At a distance it doesn’t look dangerous. With context, it carries a lot more weight when they see someone surviving a big wave or going around the Golden Gate, where the current is extremely powerful,” Lenny said. “For a spectator, seeing what we do is only the surface of what it’s really like.”
