November 5 was a day to remember at Nazaré. Praia do Norte gets the biggest surfable waves on the planet, and the big wave season there is just getting started. The crowds were out in force — not just in the water, but on the cliff, as well.
“It was really crowded today at the cliff,” wrote Barena Film & Sports on YouTube. “There were more than 5,000 people standing under the intermittent rain watching the few surfers trying to get some bombs in stormy conditions.”
The waves weren’t perfect, not by a long shot, but they certainly were gigantic. Sixty foot bombs rolled in all over the place, seemingly with out much rhyme or reason. “Waves over 60 feet were coming from every direction,” Barena continued. “The inside was as hard as it gets to navigate and the cliff was like being at a Rolling Stones concert!”
As the winter rolls on in Portugal, we can surely expect more giant swells. The Nazaré canyon is a unique place, funneling deep water open-ocean swells along its length and focusing them towards that now-famous lighthouse. Surfing Nazaré at size is always dangerous, but even more so when the waves are unpredictable and messy. It’s never a place anyone wants to wipe out at, but of all the conditions the place can offer, these might’ve been some of the scariest.
