Waterman of the Year Nathan Florence conquers a Brazilian slab that rears 17 storeys high and lands in “three feet of water”

“Whoever started surfing this wave is out of their mind”

The newly minted Waterman of the Year, Hawaii-born and maddeningly cool Nathan Florence, has brought his YouTube viewers along to Brazil for a POV ride of one of the heaviest waves in the world. 

The joint is called Shock Slab, which is a translation of the Portuguese Laje do Shock, and it is found just west of Rio.

It is a wave, of sorts, that rears, sometimes seventeen stories high, and attempts to squeeze the rider’s brain out of his ears. Riders talk of feeling the sides of their skulls collapse, then expand, and where there had been respondent brain was now a purple putty. The Shock Slab  was first ridden by bodyboarders using the power of arms and flippers thought it was later colonised, as these places usually are, by surfers harnessing the horsepower of jetskis.

The video begins with Nathan Florence accepting his Waterman of the Year after a short, but excellent, speech by his wife Mahina Florence, who is the daughter of world champion jiujitsu black belt and former strong-arm of Andy and Bruce Irons, Mr Kai Garcia aka The Kaiborg. The award’s prestige is unimpeachable, previous winners including WSL owners Dirk and Natasha Ziff.

Nathan Florence also visits the California headquarters of Florence (formerly Florence Marine X) in Newport Beach. Staff people are very happy to see the face behind the brand.

Surfing begins at nine minutes although Mahina’s speech a few mins in is worth the slender splice of time it takes to listen.

Essential.