Garrett Garrett McNamara screaming into the abyss of a Nazaré monster yesterday. Pic: Tó Mané / Zon North CanyonSo, just how big was Garrett McNamara’s over-sized wave at Nazaré, Portugal? It’s been described as a world record 100 footer and dismissed as not even a wave. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for debate. In one stunning photo (with the tiny people on the lighthouse in the foreground – featured above) it looks like bigger than anything seen before. It looks surreal, photo-shopped, like it could be happening on a distant, George Lucas-imagined planet. The video footage brings us quickly back down to earth but is – in its own way – no less remarkable. The mythical Portuguese sea monster rears, caps, growls, stands up and then – just when shits about to get devastating – it sputters out. GMac rides it valiantly but what is he riding? A swell or a wave? And if it’s a wave how does anyone possibly measure it?
These are important questions for the Billabong XXL judges when they start handing out awards and bags of cash later in the year. Last year they awarded G-Mac the biggest wave of the year award for a different descent at Nazaré, not without controversy. Some judges measured that wave to be between 85-90 feet but it later entered the official Guinness Book of Records at 78 feet. Measuring big waves is hard at the best of times. One surfer’s 12 foot is another’s eight foot. Strangely, there are few odd-sized waves over five foot. We round up or round down. Maybe that’s happens on a larger scale in mega waves. Seventy footers become eighty foot. Ninety footers become 100 foot. That would fit in with surfing’s already elastic scale and annoy non-surfers no end. But I guess you can’t have a world record without a specific number.
What’s been interesting about this whole Nazaré thing is the lack of excitement it’s stirred up among surfers. It’s been a lot like the excitement that raged when Garrett rode his 78 footer at Navare and broke the world record. Remember that? The mainstream media pounced on it and the 100 foot wave story but the surf community didn’t really get their knickers in a twist. They were nothing compared to the Code Red day at Teahupoo or the mega Cloudbreak swell(s) or the more recent paddle session at Jaws. Those were days that pushed big wave surfing forward and they weren’t hard to recognize. Which is not to dismiss Garrett McNamara’s skills as a big wave surfer or his feats at Navare. Ten years ago –during the tow-in boom – he might have made the cover of Tracks. Today our indifference to the possibility of the 100 foot barrier being broken is a measure of just how far big wave surfing has come. Size matters, but not as much as volume.
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