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< September October 2006
	Hotline
Course Work Scott Shipley lectures on the new National Whitewater Center, his 13-year college career, and his trademark “Scobstacles”

By the time you read this, the world’s largest artificial river will be open to the paddling public with four distinct sections catering to everyone from beginners to bigwater playboaters and Olympic slalom racers. The sprawling National Whitewater Center will also house the U.S. Canoe & Kayak Association headquarters, a restaurant, biking trails, climbing wall and space for 10,000 spectators. A coalition of visionaries including veteran designer Gary Lacy and entrepreneur Jeff Wise worked for years to bring forth this paddling Mecca from the red clay of Charlotte, N.C., but three-time Olympian Scott Shipley is the course’s true auteur. His engineering brainpower and whitewater savvy shaped the course, and in July he was the first to sample the goods. We spoke to him before he was dry. —jm

Let’s cut to the chase. What’s it like to paddle?

Un-freaking-believably huge. It’s big, big, big. It’s unreal. It’s so much fun. There’s no roughness on the river bottom, so it’s incredibly fast. You don’t wait for the wave—you’re moving so fast that it comes right at you. It’s so good.

You must be relieved.

I’ve been living on Rolaids for the past two months. I basically graduated [with a masters in mechanical engineering] and a month later I was in charge of this $37 million project. It wasn’t until we first ran this thing that I knew it would work. Everything has come out dead-nuts the way we calculated.

Does this course remind you of any particular river?

Not just one. I’m a whitewater connoisseur, so I was looking for the best of the best in terms of rapids, and I wanted something for everybody. I come from a paddling family—my dad and my brother were both on the national team—and we always wanted to find a river that we all could enjoy. We’d go to Skook, and when the wave got bigger I’d be the only one still surfing it. My mom would be back at the car, reading a book.

This course has a Beginner Channel that’s perfect for people to learn on, with big eddies and places to swim to. For intermediates we have the Freestyle Channel, where paddlers can progress and learn to play. It has fluffy waves about a foot and a half high. Absolutely nothing in it is intimidating.

What about people who want to be intimidated?

We have the Big Water Channel, with 750 cfs of big, bouncy whitewater, crisp eddylines and an enhanced M-Wave.

Like the M-Wave in Montrose, Colorado, which is famous for serving up big air?

Exactly. When we started planning, no artificial course in the world had a marquee surf wave. So I wanted to build a wave that people would drive five hours just to surf. I drive five hours to the M-Wave every year, so we modeled it after that.

With the “Scobstacles,” we can adjust it from a seven-foot-high V-wave to a three-foot-high foam pile. We’re calling it the “Gong Show,” because we have an idea to add mechanical actuators to change the wave on the fly. It wasn’t in the budget, but we’re hoping to add it later. If somebody hogs the wave for 60 seconds, we could change the wave and blow them off.

Scobstacles? How do you spell that?

S-C, as in Scott, plus obstacles. It was just a joke at first, but we ended up trademarking it.

The water looks really silty. What gives?

That’s from the construction dirt that was in the channel. We’ll filter it out by the time we officially open. We’ve got $1 million worth of filters and UV treatment to keep the water clean. We’re the only course in the world to treat the water. In the Sydney park and Spain’s Seu park [site of the 1992 Olympic slalom competition] they’ve had water quality issues—people getting rashes in Sydney and getting sick in Seu. If that happened in this country we’d probably get shut down.

How does the course work?

People don’t always get it. They say ‘Where’s the river?’ There’s a great big pond at the bottom, and another pond 21 feet higher at the top. We pump the water from the bottom to top, and it runs down through the different channels. It works just like a fountain in your front lawn.

But an awful lot bigger, right?

The pumps are 175 cfs each. One pump will fill a 25-meter swimming pool in 18 seconds, and we have seven pumps. Together they can crank out 1,200 cfs. They’re so powerful they have to be turned on a minute apart, or there would be a noticeable surge in the [electrical] grid. We’re expecting $120,000 a month in electricity costs.

That’s a lot of juice, and a lot of cash.

The special thing about this course is it will be profitable. Some courses break even, but this will be the first to show a profit. We can hold 250 rafters an hour, at $33 per person.

What will kayakers and canoeists pay?

Kayakers are not part of the profit model; they’re part of the break-even model. It will cost about $15 for 90 minutes of paddling, but if people are going to be here a lot they could buy a season pass.

Is this what the U.S. slalom team needs in order to compete with the best in the world?

Absolutely. It will make our sport sponsorable again. The slalom course is fast and precise at the top—so it will look great on TV—and the middle section is very physical, so you’ll get the sense of power and the bulging muscles. And the last third is just hugely beefcake.

During the Sydney year [2000] I was second in the World Cup standings, and I spent eleven and a half months on the road. We have the coaches, and our athletes are ready to train as hard as anybody in the world. It comes down to what they’re training on. If you give them a better gym, they’ll be better athletes.

You famously took something like a dozen years to get through college. Now you’ve created what may someday be called your masterpiece. Was it worth the wait?

My undergraduate degree took me 13 years. I dropped out eight times to train and compete, and I finished in the top 20 of my class in the number three program in the country. I finished grad school in a year and a quarter—I did that on an accelerated program.

But yes—it was worth it. I really enjoy engineering. I’d enjoy tinkering with molds for kewpie dolls, but working with guys like Gary Lacy on whitewater courses is really fantastic.