Nazaré is terrifying. There’s the obvious reason: the spot has the biggest waves in the world. However, the even scarier part of the wave is just how wildly unpredictable it can be. It’s a place where a good situation can turn bad at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, sometimes it can all just go in your favor. Ridge Lenny recently took to YouTube to describe a situation where the latter happened, on what he describes as one of the luckiest big waves of his life.
“I was very confident that this was going to be really easy to ride,” says Ridge at the top of the video (although ‘easy’ has a bit of a different meaning for big wave riders than it does for the rest of us). “It didn’t look that big. I was just going to cruise. I was going to go to the bottom, maybe set up for a little barrel.”
“What I didn’t realize, and what makes Nazare one of the wildest waves ever, is that these waves will just grow out of nowhere. You think you’re towing into a ten-foot wave and all of a sudden it’ll just explode into a 50-foot monster.”
That’s because of Nazaré’s extremely unique bathymetry. The massive underwater canyon that funnels swell directly onto Praia do Norte can refract swell energy and cause wave heights to suddenly double, triple or quadruple in size. It’s a break that is exceptional not only in comparison to the run of the mill beach, reef or point breaks everyday surfers face around the world, but also to other big-wave locales.
“I didn’t even realize this as I’m dropping in,” continued Lenny. “I only realized it when I got to the bottom [and] burned all my speed. I had no speed left, because I was expecting to look back and see a small wave. I look up at 50 feet of vertical water and it’s looking like its going to fall directly on top of me.”
He goes on to describe the sickening crack of the wave impacting directly behind him, followed by being completely enveloped in the crushing foam that Nazaré is known for. But then something incredible happened: He made it.
“I’m just waiting for this thing to take me out,” he continued. But then he felt the horrifying, monstrous energy of that whitewash pushing him back out. “All of a sudden I just came out in complete shock. I was just like ‘wow.’ I didn’t expect that to happen. I was expecting to be underwater, fighting for my life, but all of a sudden I’m just totally cruising. It was just one of those very lucky situations.”
