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NAZARE PORTUGAL
Winter storms and a massive underwater canyon are what produce the monster waves in Nazaré, Portugal. Eve Conant wrote in National Geographic: The waves roiling atop Europe’s largest underwater canyon — some three miles deep and 120 miles long — have long mesmerized and terrorized the small coastal community of Nazaré. No one attempted the giant swells of winter — at least not until American surfer Garrett McNamara, at the urging of dedicated locals, came to investigate in 2010. “As soon as I walked up to the lighthouse, I saw the biggest waves I’d ever seen,” he says, but conditions were terrible. “It was like, OK, this is going to be amazing as soon as we get the right wind.” He studied the waves and then rode a record-breaking, 78-foot-tall monster in 2011. Now it’s common to hear this once quiet fishing village described as surfing’s Everest, or its Holy Grail.[Source: Eve Conant, National Geographic, March 22, 2022]
Swells from winter North Atlantic storms are focused and amplified by the canyon into the crashing giants of Nazaré. Large storms occuring more than 2,000 miles away energize the ocean surface. The resulting swell can reach the Portuguese coast. The part of the swell that flows over the canyon sustains its deep-ocean speed. The part of the swell moving over the shallower seafloor slows down. The difference in speed can bend and sometimes split the swell. The faster-traveling water eventually converges with the slower water, forming a triangular peak found only in Nazaré waves. A local current flowing south along the shore is redirected by the steep headland toward the peak, supersizing the waves of Nazaré.
Surfers have long hunted for such giant waves.“That’s always been the chat — ‘Where is the 100-foot wave’?"” says British surfer Andrew Cotton. “And Nazaré is a village, and the waves break right in front of the lighthouse." He’s still incredulous. “How was the biggest wave in the world hiding, all this time, in plain sight?”
One thing is certain. The waves have changed the town — and those who ride them. Laureano can’t explain how he or other surfers survive at all: “Sometimes I just feel I just have some superpowers.” Perhaps by some unearthly osmosis these surfers do possess them. “The energy and the power that the waves have is something from another world,” he says. “It’s magic.” And mystical. Unruly.
Websites and Resources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noaa.gov; “Introduction to Physical Oceanography” by Robert Stewart , Texas A&M University, 2008 uv.es/hegigui/Kasper ; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute whoi.edu ; Cousteau Society cousteau.org ; Monterey Bay Aquarium montereybayaquarium.org
Eight of the Nine Biggest Waves Ever Surfed We at Nazare
Eight of the nine biggest waves ever surfed according to the official measurements made at the time of each stunt and recognized by the World Surf League, the governing body for professional surfers, occured at Nazare.
1) 26.21 meters (86 feet) by Sebastian Steudtner from Germany on October 29, 2020 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal. The 37-year-old German was officially recognized by the Guinness World Record as surfing the “Biggest Wave Ever Surfed” 18 months after he performed using somewhat rough calculations to estimate the wave’s height. [Source:Surfer Today]
2) 24.38 meters (80 feet) by Rodrigo Koxa from Brazil on November 8, 2017 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal.
3) 23.77 meters (78 feet) by Garrett McNamara from Hawaii on November 1, 2011 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal. McNamara held the record for the largest wave ever surfed, for six years. He claims he surfed a 100-footer (30.5 meters) also at Nazare, but the height wasn’t confirmed. After his record, he said: “What are you guys excited about?... I was just surfing with my heart and just enjoying the ride — but always focusing on the exit."
5) 73.5 feet (22.40 meters) by Maya Gabeira, a woman from Brazil, om February 11, 2020 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal. She holds the record for the largest wave surfed by a woman. Gabeira told National Geographic waves at Nazare are mystical, unruly and give one a feeling of endless water. It’s hard to find a single wave’s peak, where it will break. “It just comes from everywhere,” she says. One bone-breaking, breath-stealing wave nearly killed her. Another wave landed gave her the world record for the largest wave ever surfed — and a third broke that record, setting a new one. “It was just so much water,” she recalls, “and would shift so much, even when you were in it — that it just felt like you were going down forever, like a mountain.” Gabeira was pulled unconscious from what surfers call a rinse cycle of deadly waves in 2013. Her brush with death made her more humble, “more human.” [Source: Eve Conant, National Geographic, March 22, 2022]
6) 22.25 meters (73 feet) by Francisco Porcella from Italy on October 24, 2016 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal.
7) 21.64 meters (71 feet ) by Sebastian Steudtner from Germany on December 11, 2014 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal. ; and by Yuri Soledade from Hawaii on February 25, 2016 at — Peahi/Jaws, Maui, Hawaii.
8) 21.48 meters (70.5 feet) by Justine Dupont from France on February 11, 2020 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal.
9) 21.33 meters (70 feet) by Pete Cabrinha from Hawaii on January 15, 2016 at Peahi/Jaws; by Kai Lenny from Hawaii on February 11, 2020 at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal.
According to Surfer Today: Through time, several surfers claimed to have ridden better and bigger waves than the ones validated by the professional surfing circuit.For instance, on July 28, 1998, Ken Bradshaw took off on a huge wave at Outside Log Cabins reef in Waimea Bay, Hawaii. The wave was estimated at 85 feet (25.9 meters), but the height was never officially recognized. In January 2013, Garrett McNamara could have improved the world record that had been set by himself on November 1, 2011, at Praia do Norte, Nazaré — 78 feet (23.8 meters). But the wave was never officially submitted as a potential world record-breaker.
On December 14, 2018, Tom Butler took off on a humungous wall of water at the infamous Portuguese surf break. Several independent sources stated that the British had ridden a 100-foot wave at Praia do Norte, but WSL disagreed. Also, on October 29, 2020,Portuguese big wave rider António Laureano caught a monstrous wave at Nazaré that was later analyzed by the University of Lisbon's Faculty of Human Kinetics (FMHUL). The researchers used "fine-tuned and scientifically relevant" software to measure ocean waves and reached a conclusion. Laureano had surfed a 101.4-foot wave (30.9 meters). Once again, WSL ignored the claim, and the stunt's height was not declared valid. The ultimate big wave surfing challenge — the 100-foot wave (30.4 meters) — is still officially up for grabs.
What Makes the Monster Waves at Nazare So Big
What are the mechanics of the Nazaré Canyon and Nazare itself that produce such large waves. According to SurferToday: First, it's important to highlight the most common swell direction in the region — west and northwest. The prevailing winds blow from the northwest and southwest, with the latter associated with atmospheric depressions. Given its east-west orientation, the headland interferes with the winds and dramatically influences the sea's dynamic conditions near the beach. The headland divides the shoreline into two beaches: in the north, there's Praia do Norte; in the south, you'll find Praia da Nazaré facing the local bay.[Source: SurferToday]
The Nazaré Canyon is the largest underwater canyon in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It is located 100 kilometers north of Lisbon, with a direction of east-northeast and west-southwest in the upper and east-west in the middle and lower parts. The canyon head is located very close to the shore, reaches 20 meters in depth, and is only a few meters away from the beach. This large submarine valley leads to the Iberian Abyssal Plain, which is located around 210 kilometers off the Nazaré coast at a water depth of 5,000 meters.
According to the Portuguese Hydrographic Institute, the arrival of a powerful west-northwest of swell has the following consequences: 1) The refraction of the wave, due to the difference in depth between the continental shelf and the submarine canyon, leads to a change in its direction and speed; 2) Overtopping a topographic barrier (steep vertical variation). The abrupt depth reduction leads to a shoaling effect on the wave (reduction of wavelength and increase of wave height). This effect occurs gradually with the approach of a wave to the shore; 3) Positive interference between the wave traveling from the canyon and the wave propagating across the northern continental shelf. This effect promotes a new increase in wave height at the intersection of the two wavefronts;
4) Littoral drift. The wave propagation promotes a current, flowing along the beach in a northerly direction, which deflects offshore near the cape, acting as a topographic barrier. This current is enhanced by the water pile-up in the cove. The current, flowing in the opposite direction to wave propagation, intercepts the wavefronts, leading to an additional increase in the shoaling effect. The combined effect of these processes significantly increases wave height, which can reach much higher levels than those observed offshore. These waves break when their height is approximately equal to the local water depth. The results are spectacular, with giant waves breaking on the cliffs of the headland;
But how and why do giant waves suddenly arrive at this beach break? A few miles off the coast of Nazaré, there are drastic differences in depth between the continental shelf and the canyon. When swell heads to shore, it is quickly amplified where the two geomorphologic variables meet, causing the formation of big waves. Furthermore, water current is channeled along the shore — from North to South — in the direction of the incoming waves, additionally contributing to wave height. In conclusion, the difference in depths increases wave height, the canyon increases and converges the swell, and the local water current helps shape the world's biggest wave.
Surfing the Monster Waves at Nazare
Crowds watch big-wave surfers from the lighthouse atop Nazaré’s Fort of São Miguel Arcanjo. “Spotters” there with walkie-talkies scan for good sets of incoming waves. Eve Conant wrote in National Geographic: On the cliff and the beach below are often devoted townspeople, maritime officials, rescue teams, medics, families with watchful eyes. “Here you can yell to the surfers and they can hear you,” McNamara says. “You can feel the ground shaking and you actually get misted by the waves.
Swells coming in from different directions combine to form some of the largest waves on Earth. Surfing these waves means coming close to the force of nature and respecting it as nonnegotiable. The underwater features supercharge an unforgiving wave volume, speed, and unpredictability. There’s also a beach break — waves crash on shifting sands, not rock or coral. “Because of the storms, because of the winds, because of the big waves — the sands are always moving,” says Portuguese surfer António Laureano, at 19 among the youngest in the big-wave community. The waves are often “bumpy,” making for jagged rides that magnify the challenge. One can try to outsmart them — the first wave of a set of several “kinda cleans the bumps,” he explains. But there are no hard or fast rules. [Source: Eve Conant, National Geographic, March 22, 2022]
If watching these rides is a mixture of hope and dread, measuring them is a mixture of science and headache. There’s no end line etched in chalk, no easy reference point. “We’re talking about a dynamic situation, so we’re talking about water particles [that] are moving all the time,” says Miguel Moreira, an associate professor in the Faculty of Human Kinetics at the University of Lisbon, one of a few experts puzzling out better ways to measure for surfing records.
Nazare’s Dark History
Paul Theroux wrote in Smithsonian magazine: Vasco da Gama stopped here in 1497, before leaving for India, but that was in the summer, before the Nazaré wave began to mount. Many fishermen have set sail from Nazaré — it has been a fishing port for 400 years. But after a long successful voyage a great number of those fishing boats have met the wave and been dashed against the rocks on Nazaré’s promontory. For this reason Nazaré has for centuries been a town of widows, treading its narrow streets in black dresses and shawls, casting their eyes resentfully at the terrifying wave that destroyed their loved ones. [Source: Paul Theroux, Smithsonian magazine, July 2018
Because of the danger and the deaths, and the decline in the fishing industry, Nazaré endured hard times and became one of the many poor Portuguese towns that supplied the world with migrants, looking for better lives in the Americas and Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Far East. It seemed to many in Nazaré that there was no hope for the place, seemingly cursed with an evil wave that appeared like an avenging giant each winter and was catastrophic for the town.
But a man in Nazaré named Dino Casimiro had an idea. He had heard of the success of an expert surfer in Hawaii, Garrett McNamara, who had ridden big waves all over the world — in Tahiti, Alaska, Japan and even the bulky but solitary wave that at times rises to 80 feet and breaks in the middle of the ocean on a submerged seamount 100 miles off San Diego, on the Cortes Bank. Dino thought McNamara might be interested in visiting Nazaré and scoping out the wave, and perhaps might dare to ride it. And if he rode it and did not die, Nazaré might find itself on the map, and with a tourist industry; might even enjoy a degree of prosperity, granting it a reprieve from its destitution and its almost certain fate as a failed fishing town. This was in 2005. Dino found an address for Garrett and sent an email describing the huge wave and inviting him to Nazaré. And nothing happened.
Garrett McNamara and Nazare
Garrett McNamara finally made to Nazare in 2010. Paul Theroux wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “Oh, my God, I found the holy grail,” Garrett remembers thinking, as he saw the succession of waves. “They were 80 feet, minimum — some could have been 100. But they were so battered by the wind they had no defined shape.” Ragged, foaming giants marching toward shore, they were unridable, but still Garrett watched in awe. And a week or two later the wind dropped, the waves were glassier, many of them “A-frames,” in surfer-speak, and Garrett began surfing Nazaré. He was 43 — “physically and mentally prepared” — and rode a 40-foot wave, to the delight of some locals, but not to all of them. [Source: Paul Theroux, Smithsonian magazine, July 2018]
Many people in Nazaré turned away from him, which seemed odd to the newly arrived American in a country famous for its hospitality and warmth. “They didn’t want to know me,” Garrett says — open-hearted himself, this chilly response disturbed him. He kept surfing on the first visit, but only the other surfers took to him — and the widows, the working people and others kept their distance. The fishermen were stern-faced, warning him of the wave, advising him against riding it. Only recently, after his book appeared, did Garrett learn why so many good people in Nazaré seemed unfriendly. “They didn’t want to be close to me, because they felt I was going to die,” he says. “They lost people every winter. Everyone you meet in Nazaré knows someone who died — and especially died in a wave, within sight of shore.”
Garrett trained. “I wanted to become one with the land and the sea.” He researched the sea conditions, talking extensively to watermen and the body-boarders who had caught smaller waves at Nazaré (no surfers had attempted the giants). No longer the kid who smoked a joint before paddling into Banzai Pipeline, Garrett soberly traveled to Lisbon to discuss his plans with the Marinha Portuguesa, the Portuguese Navy. With almost 1,000 years of maritime experience (they won a great battle in 1180 down the coast from Nazaré, at Cabo Espichel) this venerable navy provided charts of the ocean floor and offered Garrett encouragement as well as material support, to the extent of placing buoys along the Nazaré Canyon approach.
This planning and training took a year, and reflecting on it you have to conclude that this was how the English Channel was first swum, and Everest was climbed, and how Amundsen skied to the South Pole: Such challenges were the subject of extensive research and contemplation before the first move was attempted. And this is also why I think the story of a 44-year-old man, strong but slightly built at 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds, is inspirational — and given the ups and downs of his personal history, an amazing trajectory.
To a non-surfer, a sea of breaking waves is one thing — lots of frothy water. To a surfer it is much more, a complex of breaks, of lefts and rights, and insides and outsides, each wave with a personality and a peculiar challenge. “There’s so many different types of waves,” Garrett told me. “In Nazaré, it’s never the same wave — there are tall ones, round ones, hollow ones. In Tavarua, Fiji and in Indonesia, there are barrels. In Namibia, you can get barreled on some waves for three minutes.” Measuring the height of a wave is another thing. “How tall is the wave you’re looking at? It’s not an exact science. One way is to look at the guy on the wave. How tall is the guy? Scale him with the wave. Figure out where the top of the wave is, where the bottom is, using a photo.” To be ranked officially, the surfer submits a photo of the wave to a panel of judges in the World Surf League. “There are branches all over,” Garrett says. “Honolulu, New York, Santa Monica. They determine the height.”
McNamara Rides the First Big Wave at Nazare
Theroux wrote: Studying the waves at Nazaré, Garrett began to differentiate them. There was First Peak, which broke right and left in front of the lighthouse. “It’s fat and falls — it doesn’t break top to bottom. It caps at the top, so it’s hard to measure.” Near it is Middle First Peak, breaking left — “The magic, luckiest wave — it’s hollow and long, and it breaks top to bottom, so it’s measurable.” And beyond that is Second Peak, a big wave that breaks right and left. Farther to sea is the wave they came to call Big Mama or the Big Right — a monster. “It has to break three kilometers out, to be safe.”[Source: Paul Theroux, Smithsonian magazine, July 2018]
On the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011 (“And Nicole says it might have been 11 in the morning”), Garrett was towed into the break at Middle First Peak and caught several big waves, bumpy rides that tested him. “I got pounded — but I was surfing Nazaré, and I was happy.”
The next morning he was woken by pounding on his door: “Garrett, it’s big!” But he hesitated, thinking: I am not going for a record. I’m going out for the love of it — for the right reasons. And though he brought his board, he was the man piloting the jet ski, towing a surfer. He put the surfer on a wave and backed off, sliding sideways in time to see the man lose his board. And that wipeout had him thinking, maybe this is the one for me. So he switched places and grabbed his own board and was towed out, where he prepared himself, performing what yoga practitioners call pranayama (breath regulation), and what Garrett calls “a breathe-up.” “Sitting on the board I did my breathe-up. It’s a complete reset. I breathe all my air out, I then fill my lungs with air while I’m looking toward shore, and I connect to the highest tree,” he says. “Then I looked back, out to sea, and I saw it swelling — really big — and I want to be in the barrel.”
He released the tow-rope and turned at the lip of water, his feet locked into the loops of the board. And set its edge on the biggest wave he’d ever ridden, and for the longest drop he could remember he was skidding in a monumental glissade down the face of this mountain-slope of a wave. I went straight to the bottom, and I punched it as hard as I could at the bottom, and I surfed straight back up and my speed pushed me in front of the wave.”
There was joy in Nazaré. The wave was submitted for measuring and proved to be 78 feet, a world record, officially the biggest wave ever surfed. “You conquered the wave, Garrett!” became a frequent cry. But Garrett shook his head, denying any such thing. “I complimented it,” he said. “I paid my respects,” and in this humility he is echoing the sentiments of the sherpas, when they finally attain the summit of Everest, known to them as Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World.
McNamara Close-to-Death Ride on a Probable 100-Footer
In November 2012 McNamara rode a Wagener-Mercedes board on the break he named First Peak in Front of the Rocks. Theroux wrote: He rose and fell in the channel in the winter sea for half a day, holding the tow-rope, his surfer friend Andrew Cotton on the jet ski. “And then I saw it — a mountain coming down the canyon — the biggest swell I’ve ever seen — bigger than last year’s.” His eyes flash, recalling the sight. “I was excited. I had been envisioning this wave for a year, all through my training.” [Source: Paul Theroux, Smithsonian magazine, July 2018]
And then he released the rope and tipped himself into the great slope of the wave and saw something he had never seen before on any wave: the face of the wave so furious and upswept that the wave he was coursing down was itself rippled with six-foot chop — like moguls on the black-diamond run of a ski slope. “The waves in the middle of that wave were the kind that most surfers would be afraid of,” Garrett said, and the wave itself he guessed was much higher than the record wave he’d surfed the previous year. “So I’m going down, hunting for the sweet spot, when I can line up to get into the barrel.”
The wave began to break, then it backed off, and Garrett in retrospect estimated his speed at between 60 and 70 miles an hour. “The most massive swell I’ve ever ridden, the fastest I’ve ever gone — I could barely control my board, but luckily it was this new board that had been made for me and for this wave. Even so, it was pretty much just survival.”
Yet the wave did not break, and seeing that he was speeding almost out of control, 20 feet from the rocks, he kicked out just as the rocks loomed. Then he was struggling in the water, on the board paddling. As the “safety ski” intending to pluck him aside was pounded by the wave, Garrett swam under (“or I would have been crushed on dry rock”) and fought away from shore and was grabbed by another ski and towed to the channel.Shaking his head, Garrett says, “It was the closest I had ever come to death.”
Although he had satisfied himself with the experience, the town of Nazaré was eager to enter Garrett’s ride in the record books. Garrett pointed out that the wave had not tipped and broken: It had been a moving mountain, easily the 100-footer he had sought all his surfing life. But he pulled the wave from consideration for the World Surf League’s XXL Biggest Wave Awards. “I did not go out that day and surf for a world record,” he says. “All I wanted was to feel what it was like to ride that wave.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons; YouTube, NOAA
Text Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noaa.gov; “Introduction to Physical Oceanography” by Robert Stewart , Texas A&M University, 2008 uv.es/hegigui/Kasper ; Wikipedia, National Geographic, Live Science, BBC, Smithsonian, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Reuters, Associated Press, Lonely Planet Guides and various books and other publications.
Last Updated March 2023