The Wave Behind Every Tow-In Big Wave World Record (One Photograph Started It All)

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[00:00:00]On November 1st, 2011, a Hawaiian big wave surfer named Garrett McNamara was towed into a wave at Praia do Norte on the Atlantic coast of Portugal by Andrew Cotton on a jet ski with Al Menny on the safety ski. [music] McNamara rode the wave.

[00:00:19]The wave was later measured at 78 ft from trough [music] to crest.

[00:00:24]Guinness World Records certified it in May 2012 as the largest wave ever surfed.

[00:00:30]A photograph of the ride taken by Portuguese [music] photographer Antonio Manuel Silva was published around the world in major newspapers and sports outlets.

[00:00:38]A dying fishing village that almost nobody outside [music] Portugal had ever heard of became a famous surf location in the space of 24 hours.

[00:00:48]Every fact, act, and every measurement in this video [music] has been verified against primary sources including NASA's Earth Observatory and the World Surf League.

[00:00:59]This is Nazaré.

[00:01:00]The place where the biggest waves on the planet are born.

[00:01:04]And the story of how the ocean produces them here and nowhere else.

[00:01:09]The town of Nazaré sits on the Atlantic coast of Portugal approximately 60 mi north of Lisbon.

[00:01:17]Portugal occupies the westernmost edge of continental Europe which means the Atlantic Ocean stretches uninterrupted to the west and northwest of Nazaré all the way to North America.

[00:01:30]In winter, deep low pressure storm systems form repeatedly in the North Atlantic generating powerful long period swells that travel southeast across thousands of miles of open ocean.

[00:01:43]Because Portugal sits at the very edge of the continent, there is nothing between Nazaré and those storms.

[00:01:49]Every swell the North Atlantic generates in winter arrives at the Portuguese coastline at full power [music] having lost almost nothing in transit.

[00:01:58]but the same can be said of dozens of locations along the Portuguese coast.

[00:02:03]What makes Nazaré different from every single one of them is what sits on the ocean floor directly offshore.

[00:02:09]Approximately 1 km from the beach at Praia do Norte, the ocean floor drops away into the Nazaré Canyon.

[00:02:17]The Nazaré Canyon is the largest submarine canyon in Europe.

[00:02:21]It is approximately 230 km long and 5,000 m deep at its maximum point.

[00:02:28]Researchers believe the canyon is related to the Nazaré Fault, a fracture zone where movements can still cause earthquakes in the region.

[00:02:37]The canyon runs approximately east to west, directly perpendicular to the incoming Atlantic swell, and its head sits [music] just meters from the beach at Praia do Norte.

[00:02:49]NASA's Earth Observatory has explained the mechanics of what happens when a North Atlantic swell reaches the Nazaré Canyon.

[00:02:57]The part of the wave traveling in deep water over the canyon moves significantly faster than the part of the wave in the shallower shelf water on either side.

[00:03:06]This difference in speed causes the wave to bend in the direction of Nazaré, converging toward Praia do Norte.

[00:03:14]At the same time, waves arriving from the northwest that have not passed through the canyon continue their course toward the same beach.

[00:03:21]The two waves, one bent and accelerated by the canyon, the other arriving directly from the northwest across the continental shelf, meet at Praia do Norte.

[00:03:32]The pattern of interference, large wave meeting large wave, produces the super-sized waves that have made Nazaré a famous surfing location.

[00:03:41]The Nazaré Canyon can amplify wave height up to three times the size of the predicted swell for the surrounding Portuguese coast.

[00:03:50]A southward-flowing coastal current running from north to south along the shore further contributes to the wave height.

[00:03:57]The cliff of the fort of São Miguel or Canhão at Praia do Norte reflects water back into the incoming swell adding a final layer of amplification.

[00:04:08]Nowhere else has this specific combination of canyon geometry, coastal current, and cliff reflection acting simultaneously on an incoming North Atlantic swell.

[00:04:19]That is why every tow-in world record has been set here.

[00:04:24]For most of its history, Nazaré was a fishing village.

[00:04:28]The fishermen of Nazaré had always known the sea off Praia do Norte was different from other stretches of the Portuguese coast.

[00:04:36]The water there was unpredictable and violent even when the weather was calm elsewhere.

[00:04:41]Shipwrecks were common enough that the cape became feared by mariners for generations.

[00:04:47]By the time the 21st century arrived, Nazaré was struggling.

[00:04:51]The fishing industry had declined. The summer tourist season was not enough to sustain the village through the winter.

[00:04:58]The mayor of Nazaré was looking for something to change the town's fortunes.

[00:05:04]A local bodyboarder named Dino Casimiro had spent years watching the winter waves at Praia do Norte from the cliff above and believed those waves were the largest in the world.

[00:05:14]In January 2005, Casimiro pointed his camera at the waves and sent a photograph to a Hawaiian big wave surfer named Garrett McNamara.

[00:05:23]McNamara received the email and missed it.

[00:05:26]>> [music] >> The photograph sat unread in his inbox for 5 years.

[00:05:30]It was his wife, Nicole, who found it in 2010.

[00:05:34]McNamara flew to Portugal. He stood on the cliff above Praia do Norte and looked down at the Atlantic.

[00:05:40]He later said he knew immediately he had found his holy grail.

[00:05:45]McNamara contacted the Portuguese Navy in Lisbon who provided nautical charts and placed navigation buoys along the Nazaré Canyon approach.

[00:05:54]He arrived in Nazaré in November 2010 [music] and stayed for a month.

[00:05:59]In those early sessions, Nicole McNamara [music] watched alone from the disused fort above the beach while her husband surfed.

[00:06:06]On November 1st, 2011, Andrew Cotton towed McNamara [music] into the wave that changed everything. Whoa.

[00:06:13]With Al Menny on the safety ski and Antonio Manuel Silva positioned on the cliff above with a camera, the wave measured 78 ft. The photograph ran around the world. Nazaré was no longer dying. Nazaré was reborn as the new big wave hotspot.

[00:06:32]In the years that followed, every major big wave surfer came to Nazaré.

[00:06:37]The records fell in sequence.

[00:06:39]On November 8th, 2017, a Brazilian surfer named Rodrigo Koxa was towed into a wave at Praia do Norte by Sérgio Cosme.

[00:06:50]The wave was measured at 80 ft and Guinness World Records certified it as the largest wave ever surfed, breaking McNamara's 6-year-old record by 2 ft.

[00:07:01]On February 11th, 2020, Maya Gabeira surfed 73 and 1/2 ft at Praia do Norte, the largest wave ever surfed by a woman, confirmed by Guinness World Records.

[00:07:14]On October the 29th, 2020, Sebastian Steudtner, a German big wave surfer from Nuremberg who had moved to Hawaii at 16 years old to pursue his surfing career, was towed into a wave at Praia do Norte by a waterman known in the surfing world as Alemão de Maresias.

[00:07:34]Steudtner later said the wave was the most intense experience he had ever felt at Nazaré.

[00:07:40]That his face was melting from the wind and that he had never imagined it being possible in surfing until that day.

[00:07:47]The wave was measured by the World Surf League at 86 ft using a painstaking 18-month process involving geometrically corrected video frames, known objects in the image including his own body as a measuring reference and analysis from multiple camera angles.

[00:08:05]On May the 24th, 2022, Guinness World Records certified the 86-ft wave as the largest wave ever surfed.

[00:08:13]His record beat Cox's by 6 ft.

[00:08:16]It still stands.

[00:08:18]In 2024, Steudtner surfed a wave at Praia do Norte measured by a Porsche engineering drone at 93.73 ft.

[00:08:27]If verified by Guinness World Records, it would be the largest wave ever surfed in recorded history.

[00:08:32]The ratification is still pending.

[00:08:35]For 11 years after McNamara's first world record at Praia do Norte, Nazaré had produced nothing but records.

[00:08:42]On January the 5th, 2023, that changed.

[00:08:47]A 47-year-old Brazilian big-wave surfer named Márcio Freire arrived at Praia do Norte for a tow-in session.

[00:08:55]Freire had been one of the original Mad Dogs, the three Brazilian surfers who proved in 2006 and 2007 that human beings could paddle into the biggest waves at Pe'ahi in Hawaii without jet ski support or inflatable vests.

[00:09:11]Freire's parents had traveled from Brazil to spend Christmas with Freire in Nazaré, and they were in the town the day he died.

[00:09:19]Freire was towed into a Nazaré wave, fell, was driven underwater, >> [music] >> and did not surface.

[00:09:27]His tow partner, Lucas Chianca, known in the surfing world as Chumbo, pulled him from the water and brought him to shore in cardiac arrest.

[00:09:36]None of the life support measures on the beach were successful.

[00:09:40]Marcio Freire was declared dead at Praia do Norte.

[00:09:45]Mario Lopes Figueredo, the captain of the port of Nazaré, confirmed it was the first confirmed surfing fatality [music] in the history of the break.

[00:09:54]Nazaré had produced multiple Guinness World Records.

[00:09:57]Nazaré had hosted the most extraordinary sessions in the history of big wave surfing.

[00:10:03]Nazaré had never before taken a life.

[00:10:06]It took the life of one of the men who had helped prove that the biggest waves in the world could be ridden at all.

[00:10:13]The 100-ft wave has never been officially ratified in Nazaré.

[00:10:17]Witnesses have estimated waves that size on multiple occasions [music] across multiple sessions.

[00:10:24]Measurements have not confirmed those estimates.

[00:10:27]The canyon [music] is capable of producing them.

[00:10:29]The surfers are ready for it.

[00:10:31]The technology to measure it now exists.

[00:10:33][music] What it requires is the right storm in the North Atlantic, the right swell direction, the right tide, the right wind.

[00:10:42]Those conditions align on only a handful of days each winter [music] between October and April.

[00:10:47]On those days, the surfers arrive at Praia do Norte before dawn.

[00:10:52]Spotters take their positions on the cliff above the fort of São Miguel Arcanjo, and the jet skis go to work.

[00:10:59]Dino Casimiro sent one email with one photograph in January [music] 2005.

[00:11:05]Garrett McNamara's wife found it in an inbox 5 years later.

[00:11:11]The canyon became the stage on which [music] every tow-in world record has been set.

[00:11:16]It took the life of one of the men who helped make it possible.

[00:11:20]The canyon was here before any of them arrived.

[00:11:23]>> [music] >> It will be here long after the last record falls, and it will keep making waves.

[00:11:29]The The does not negotiate.

[00:11:31]>> [music] >> It does not pause.

[00:11:33]It simply delivers what the canyon demands of it and the surfers keep [music] coming.