where did the artificial reef forum go?

I'm hearing you inzider.

I Iearnt to surf on the sunny coast as a young fella but spent most of my late teens to thirties living directly across the road from Narrowneck on the Goldie. I mean over 10 years beachfront on Marine Pde, Main Beach. I went to uni at GUGC in the early 90's. I left Main Beach for a career move just as they were starting the reef in 1999.

Narrowneck was hardly epic, most of my time was spent surfing South Straddie, The Spit or Burleigh. If the winds were southerly I'd surf Kirra or Snapper before it became the Superbank. But, Narrowneck would deliver on occasion.

I remember thinking then as I still do now, speaking to my old local mates, what a huge fucking waste of money. On flat days the fisho's would get a few whiting or flatties, nothing better than you'd get over the back in the inlet bordering McIntosh Is.

I've been back a few times and seen it in many different swell and wind combo's. Dribbly, shitty, mis-shapen thing that it is. In optimal conditions, any bank from the spit to Miami would be on, hardly worth the million or so that mother nature puts on for free.

http://www.surfingramps.com.au/Narrowneck.htm

There's a link within this link to Youtube showing 2 pretty decent waves. I can assure you, pre-artificial reef, I've had much better waves at Narrowneck than what's shown in this vid.

PS Surfed Mt Maunganui (spelling?) pre-fake reef around 2004, can't remember but got epic waves courtesy of some lovely banks and a solid groundswell. Havn't heard a good word about their artificial reef since.

inzider, there's no conspiracy theory - the surfing reef forum is down due to a technical issue that is seemingly (and unbelievably) unresolvable. It'll be back as soon as we can find a way however unfortunately it's much further down the priority list than a lot of other things right now.

FWIW, as well as the surfing reef forum, we've also covered the problems with ASR reefs in a couple of articles:

http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/27-artificial-reef-blows-out
http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/2230-artificial-intelligence-problems-at...
http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/3093-dr-shaw-mead-on-artificial-reefs-th...

..as well as this opinion piece from Stu in 2009:

http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/9-the-danger-of-artificial-reefs