Artificial reef: Surfers wait to catch Dorset's £3m wave

You'll change into your wetsuit in the world's grooviest beach hut, designed by Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemingway, tuck your surfboard under your arm, trot down to the sea and paddle out like mad. Then, as long as the oceanographers did their calculations correctly, your board will be whizzed back to shore on steep waves tidied up and amplified by the first artificial surf reef to be built in Europe.

It would be pushing it to suggest that the atmosphere in the Dorset resort of Bournemouth was febrile but there was certainly some excitement yesterday as work on installing the reef began in earnest. In the coming months the reef, the size of a football pitch and made of dozens of huge specially-designed bags pumped full of sand, will take shape on the sandy seabed starting at 210 metres off the beach at Boscombe. Surfers are due to start catching the first artificially boosted waves by the end of October.

The reef, which is costing the best part of £3m, is the centrepiece of a regeneration project in Boscombe - compared with central Bournemouth a poorer, less glamorous part of Poole Bay. On the back of the development boutique hotels are being developed, restaurants opened and beachside flats built.

Boscombe is being marketed aggressively to the growing band of south-east surfers for whom day trips to traditional surfing hotspots in Devon and Cornwall are out of the question. Marine biologists are said to be keen, thinking the structure might provide a haven for fish and crustaceans.

Other resorts are looking on with interest. After Bournemouth the reef's designer, the New Zealand company ASR, is moving on to Kovalam in southern India, and it has carried out a feasibility study for two reefs in Goa. If Boscombe is a success it expects other British seaside towns to be banging on its door.

Shaw Mead, an ASR director, said: "A lot of towns in the UK and around the world have good swell but no natural breaks. It's rare that mother nature creates the conditions for great surfing. But we can help create those conditions."

There are doubters who do not believe that within six months excellent surfing waves will be rolling on to Boscombe beach. Reports of surfing conditions on ASR's reefs in New Zealand and Australia have not always been glowing.