And the Australian Mick Corbett gets tossed like a salad!
Whatever your feelings about the “biggest wave in the world”, Portugal’s Nazaré, y’gotta admit it’s a photogenic sonofabitch.
Like most of us, I figured it was a giant burger operated, mostly, by semi-kooks dazzled by the idea of big-wave surfing, but then Shane Dorian, who was surprised by the ferocity of Nazaré, set me straight.
“The place is a logistical nightmare,” said Shane. “We lost a couple of skis. And, it’s really hard to do rescues there, really really hard. Each surfer needs his own water rescue guy on a ski. At all times. It’s really super dangerous. There’s a cliff there. All that shit. Once, I caught a wave and we lost one of the skis in the shore break. I finally got back out there an hour later. I got a couple more waves and then we had to ditch another ski on the sand. It is just chaotic. I had one of those feelings that I should be happy with the two waves I caught. It’s a full on beach break. It’s like these big wedges down the beach so every time you catch a wave there’s no way to paddle back out. You need a jet ski to come and get you right away and there’s a rip sucking you straight into a big cliff. It’s a lot like the north shore when the waves are big. The water’s really angry.”
The video, below, is from the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Miranda.
“It was a nasty and ugly session, unridable,” says Pedro. “We call it ‘Black Naza’ when it’s like that… the conditions were extreme, not because of the size, but because things were more out of control than usual: strong onshore winds, biggest waves closing out and the inside was impossible for the security team.”
In the water there was the Australian Mick Corbett, another Australian, Jarryd Foster, Portugal’s Nuno Santos and the Italian stud Alessandro Marciano.
“But only Mick got waves,” says Pedro. “That was that kind of day where you’re not expecting them to go in, but these guys are from Australia… man… it was a sick show to watch. Big respect to the Aussies! Overall, Mick charged into three waves which are all in the video. One was a WSL Big Wave entry few days ago, two of them he couldn’t make. The bigger ones were killers so the waves he got were like the mid-size from the session…”