Photo via SurferToday.com
The Holy Grail of big-wave surfing is the elusive 100-foot wave.
Like the quest for the biblical Holy Grail, finding and riding a bona fide 100-footer has become a singular obsession that has led a small group of obsessed men around the world to take some extreme risks, and claimed some lives in the process.
Garrett McNamara might have just become the Indiana Jones of the surfing world.
The 45-year-old daredevil from Hawaii (natch) reportedly hung-10 on this colossal swell off the coast of Nazare, Portugal.
See that tiny, pixel-sized speck in the middle of the photo above? That’s McNamara.
Somehow, he is currently not dead.
If you’ve ever surfed before, you know that a piddly five-foot swell in enough to gobble you up and pummel you in its backwash. The alleged-100 footer surfed by McNamara would almost certainly have torn him to shreds had he wiped out.
Although the height of the wave has not yet been officially confirmed, it’s undoubtedly one of the most monstrous walls of water ever ridden.
The teaser clip released today (which seems to show a few seconds of McNamara’s ride at the 39-second mark) probably doesn’t need operatic music accompanying it, since the footage alone is beyond epic.
World record or not, this one is monumental.
