How It Feels to Surf the World’s Biggest Wave | Hacker News Reader

How It Feels to Surf the World’s Biggest Wave

nautil.us

56 pointsdnetesn24 comments

I surf and kitesurf. I guess the hardest thing to describe about the sea is how violent it can be. Getting a wave on the head (a wave of decent size) is colossal. Every part of your body is attacked, board shorts ripped off, arms flung around, head whipped back, legs hit your chest or back.

Big waves are crazy powerful.

Then there's the speed, wizzing over choppy water on a board feels like driving over a very pot holed dirt road, the chops SLAM into the board over and over again. You lean on the rail to turn and the board may just drop away into a hole or get slammed up by chop.

And if you fall, you don't penetrate the water, you just skim over it like a flat stone (or a rag doll in the mouth of a dog, shaking it from side to side)

When you wipe out, especially if you do it close to where the wave breaks, you're leaving out the part where you're deep underwater, being thrown around like a coffee bean in a grinder, not knowing which way is up and having the somewhat nagging problem of finding air again.

And when you finally do emerge, what do you know, the next wave is already here for the next trip down.

And all of that is assuming there isn't sharp coral reefs at the bottom.

It's even more nerve wracking when you watch surfers wipe out on big waves where you need jetskis to get on the wave and then again to get out of the pounding zone of the later waves of the set. Sometimes the jetskis just can't get to them in time and you see the surfer getting put in an extreme wash cycle mode one time after the other until the ocean decides that they're done with them.

With kitesurfing you also have the lines in the mix. The biggest waves I personally surfed were 8m (what can I say, I was young and stupid). One guy dropped his kite and the next thing he was standing on the shore with every section of his kite ripped out. We were all feeling sorry for his ruined kite but he was happy to get out of there alive. Apparently he got tangled in his lines underwater and thought he was done but by some miracle managed to get out.

Something similar happened to me as well, kite dropped in on shore winds in fairly small surf (max 2 meters), but pretty soon the lines were around my legs. Tried to cut the lines using the knive in my harness, but couldn’t get loose. Luckily I washed up on shore, but was a pretty scary experience.

Largest waves I windsurfed was about 4 meters in Maui, went head first down the wave, mast got stuck in the coral reef, snapped like it was nothing. Even at 4 meters, waves are pretty powerful.

There's a great documentary about Nazare, and the crazy guy who helped develop the spot. https://www.hbo.com/100-foot-wave

It's well-shot and more interesting than you'd expect.

Maya Gabeira (from the article) is featured too.

Eagerly awaiting season 2!

I was in Nazaré a couple of weeks ago and I loved it. While the waves were not gaint (100ft) they were around 20ft one of the days and this still really allows you to appreciate the power of the ocean. I really liked the town - nothing is better then cheap coffee and Pastel de Nata. It's certainly worth a visit there :)

Yeah, beautiful place, and the view from the top of the cliff behind the village is breathtaking.

I was also there a couple of years ago, in Winter with about 8m waves rolling onto the rocks. Even if I do know how to ride big waves I was not that stupid to try it there. It's insanely dangerous, worse than Mavericks. Even Supertubulos, on the other side were too high, they were like Puerto Escondido on big days.

A nitpic on the article. Teahupoo is not a big wave surfing spot similar to Jaws/Mavrics/Nazaré. It's a know for it's freakishly thick shape, amazing barrels, and dangerous reef, but the biggest wave there is about 25 feet, not even in the conversation with the 80+ waves at the other locations. Here it is on one of it's biggest days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSq5pBKFzJQ

Yeah, except that if you go under at Teahupoo, it's so thick it's probably going to feel like an 80ft wave [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teahupo%27o#Surfing_deaths_at_...

I've heard of people bursting their eardrums there just duck-diving into a wave because of the sudden and severe change in pressure from imstantly being under that much water.

Probably not true, I don't have enough knowledge about these things to prove from a physics standpoint that it doesn't happen but I've watched tons of big wave surfers' interviews and podcasts where they were talking about what it's like to get wiped out and none of them mentioned it.

Immediate severe concussion however....

I believe it, I've had my eardrums go pfffzzzt from diving into much lighter waves

What's notable is that despite its ferocity and danger, according to the wiki section only one recorded death. Must be similar to free soloing in rock climbing where only the most competent dare to do it so the number of deaths is fewer than you'd have thought considering the risk.

The Nazaré canyon makes this wave quite particular. Here some more explanations on this wave's mechanics https://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/the-mechanics-of-the-naz...

As a side note (but related to Nazare), I always found this hilarious:

Someone selling "Bottled water from the giants waves of Nazare"

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ex0KUcNNsUU/UyQW_2iKAWI/AAAAAAAAF...

What is surprising us that they found the spot only in 2011. It's not like Portugal was a remote and unaccessible country before

I’m sure it was known but I bet everyone just assumed they were staring at death. Once that first surfer and jet ski driver got brave enough to demonstrate it was survivable it was game on.

I can ensure you that's not the case. I was born a couple dozen kilometres from there and as a kid, there was little to no people surfing in the region.

The surfing culture in Nazaré was inexistant before 2011, it was just a beach place known for good fish and nice people.

Seems like you're saying exactly what parent comment is saying.

> In fact, the equations used to determine how intensely sunlight would be focused by a magnifying glass are the same equations used to determine how a canyon would focus wave energy, he says.

For those curious, the concept in physics is intensity [0], essentially power per unit area. Can be used to describe all sorts of waves, including ocean waves.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensity_(physics)

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