Cabo Real Surf Club Development Moving Earth, Making Waves

When we first reported on Cabo Real Surf Club, Mexico’s first luxury wave pool community, it felt like a big idea with serious upside: a private residential club on the Cabo corridor built around a four-acre surf basin, positioned shoulder-to-shoulder with a championship golf course.

Now, it’s no longer theoretical. The site is fully under construction. Infrastructure is going in. The basin footprint is unmistakable. And the story behind the project reveals why this isn’t just another surf park, it’s the next evolution of the private club model in North America.

A Family Bet Decades in the Making

The land that will soon host perfect, pneumatic-generated waves has been in the Sánchez Navarro family since the late ’80s. Eduardo Sánchez Navarro first came to Cabo on his honeymoon and saw potential in a stretch of coastline that was still largely undeveloped.

The family acquired a significant piece of the corridor between San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas and began shaping what became Cabo Real. The golf course opened in 1994. Casa del Mar followed. But the back portion of Cabo Real, an ocean-view plateau overlooking the Sea of Cortez, remained untouched. Until now.

"This is how we wanted to kick-start the rest of the property," Fabian Bouffier, a partner at Cabo Real and a cousin of the landowners, the Sanchez Navarro family. "I know this land like the back of my hand.”

That local connection matters. While much of the family’s leadership is based in Mexico City, Fabian’s day-to-day familiarity with the property has helped bridge legacy land ownership with a forward-looking surf concept.

Why Surf? And Why Now?

The surf basin entered the picture in early 2022, when Meriwether Companies reconnected with Grupo Questro in the post-pandemic surge of real estate interest. Meriwether had worked in Cabo before and understood both the market and the opportunity. What they saw was rare: an existing championship golf course paired with a relatively flat, ocean-view site tailor-made for a basin. Rather than replace golf, they doubled down.

Pre-COVID, some private golf communities were losing steam. Post-COVID, participation in both golf and surfing exploded. The team saw surf not as a gimmick—but as a generational bridge. 

“We were looking for something more experiential, more communal,” explains Graham Culp, who co-founded Meriwether Companies in 2011. “Surf brings in a different buyer.”

Unlike public surf parks built on ticketed sessions, Cabo Real Surf Club is designed as a private, member-driven environment. The pneumatic technology allows for customized waves, whether a single surfer wants repetition or multiple members want to share the lineup. And unlike golf, which often splits families into foursomes and tee times, surfing tends to bring everyone into the water together. Teenagers who might skip 18 holes? They’ll paddle out.

The Cabo Question

Of course, the obvious question lingers: Why build a wave pool in a place with world-class ocean surf? The answer is reliability.

Within an hour of Cabo Real, you can find waves year-round, Pacific side or East Cape. But the ocean isn’t always user-friendly. It’s not always consistent. And it’s not always progression-oriented. A basin guarantees repetition. It gives beginners a safe on-ramp. It gives intermediate surfers controlled practice. And for advanced riders, it offers refinement on demand.

It also solves for seasonality. Cabo’s prime weather runs fall through early summer. Golf in July and August can be brutal. Surfing? Different story. A controlled wave, warm water, and summer swells lighting up the East Cape make the basin a magnet during months that might otherwise slow down. Add in direct flights from nearly every major U.S. hub, and the timing starts to make sense.

Building Something That Doesn’t Have a Playbook

If designing a golf club is copy-and-paste, building a private wave basin community is not. There’s no established manual for how to operate a members-only surf lagoon. Reservation systems. Skill-based sessions. Energy management. Long-term durability. Much of it is being refined in real time.

“There’s not a lot of private club wave basin rules and regulations to copy,” jokes Culp. And by that he means none. This is all being created in real time. 

Engineering is another frontier. While pneumatic basins operate in places like Munich, every environment is different. Cabo’s climate, infrastructure, and scale demand careful decisions around water, power, and other operational concerns. The goal: maximize wave quality while minimizing downtime.

Still, if there’s one area that hasn’t been a challenge, it’s demand. Sales have remained steady, even through the summer months when Cabo typically cools off from a real estate standpoint. Buyers ask pointed questions. Some answers are evolving. But the appetite is there.

“It’s either for you or it’s not,” Fabian admits. “But when people understand it, they get excited.”

Countdown to First Waves

The current target is to begin commissioning and running test waves by late summer 2026, with full operational readiness by the end of the year. Surf casitas are expected to break ground in early 2026, aligning residential stays with the basin’s debut. Meanwhile, lot owners are preparing to build custom homes as infrastructure rolls out across the property.

Stand on-site today and the scale is hard to ignore. The basin footprint is massive. The excavation runs deep. The ambition is obvious. It still feels like a long way from that first mechanical right peeling across the lagoon. But progress is visible week to week.

And if Cabo Real Surf Club delivers on its promise, it won’t just add another dot to the global surf park map. It could redefine what a modern private club looks like, where championship golf and flawless waves share equal billing, and where surfing isn’t an add-on. It’s the headline.