12/21/2023 0 Comments Distance wavesurferPhoto courtesy of Mason Barnes/Instagram. American Mason Barnes, 26, travels the world in search of big waves. It could have been the biggest day in surfing history.” Barnes estimated the wave heights off Nazaré, Portugal’s rocky coastline, reached at least 80 to 90 feet on Oct. Yesterday was by far the tallest day I’ve ever seen. “I think someone rode the biggest wave in history yesterday,” Barnes said on the phone from Portugal. Rather, they’re whipped into the waves behind personal watercraft such as a WaveRunner or Jet Ski, holding on to towropes like wakeboarders until the wave’s gravitational pull takes over. Monster waves are far too big and fast for surfers to catch by paddling under their own power. Big-wave surfing mirrors the logistical complexity and physical dangers of climbing 8,000-meter peaks like Mount Everest in the Himalayas. The whole operation must be timed with the arrival of the all-important big waves - an environmental window that might only last a day or two. It’s a logistical feat in its own right to arrive at one of the world’s best big-wave surf spots with the necessary equipment and personnel to surf big-ocean swells. “It was the greatest day of my life,” he told Free Range American about Oct. In a stroke of good luck, the globe-trotting American was in London when he got the news that a once-in-a-generation swell was on its way to the fabled coastal break of Nazaré, north of Lisbon, and home of the biggest waves ever surfed.īarnes scrambled and got to Portugal. In October off the coast of Portugal, Hurricane Epsilon combined with a low-pressure system near Greenland to generate a nuclear-strength swell that rocked the entire European coastline. Big wave surfing walls as tall as a seven-story building is a dangerous and complicated business.
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