The Wedge: Waves Crash, Slam and Bang Next to Your Feet in Newport Beach
This photo was taken yesterday at The Wedge in Newport Beach, California.
One of the most powerful, up close experiences you’ll ever see allows you to feel the ocean mist, hear a thunderous roar resonate and ring through your ears, and nearly reach out and touch huge waves as they break practically on the beach right next to your feet! It’s called The Wedge, and it’s a trip worth going to see if you happen to be in Southern California.
Bodyboarding pioneer Fred Simpson made that trip as a Xerox salesman in Santa Monica who couldn’t wait to get out on sales calls and drop by the The Wedge on the end of the Newport Beach peninsula over 40 miles from his office! He went out of his way often, and helped created a phenomenon by inventing special bodyboarding fins and gear for this one-of-a-kind wave ride that’s dangerous at minimum, and exhilerating on a good day when storms bring big waves to California.
Called The Wedge because of the way the waves are formed, here’s how this “Wave Machine” works:
- Waves approach shore with force.
- Waves then bounce off the jetty’s boulders.
- Bounced waves become reflected waves that move sideways outward from the structure.
- When those reflected waves bump into the new set of incoming waves, the two combine to form a triangle shape.
- Precisely where the waves converge, the ocean floor rises abruptly, pushing the peaks upward.
