Balaram Stack on a keeper for most humans.
We had been trying to get to Nazaré for three days. We were in Cascais, Portugal for Capitulo Perfeito, the one-day tube-riding competition that’s arguably the best surfing invitational on the planet. The day after the competition, Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca had told fellow competitor Balaram Stack and Balaram’s girlfriend, Eden Edwards, that Nazaré was going to be firing. It wouldn’t be the skyscrapers of 100 Foot Wave, but upwards of 20-foot faces nonetheless. Balaram and Eden wanted to try their hands at towing the monster, and it looked like this would be their chance. Since then, the world seemed to be conspiring to keep us from Praia do Norte.
That first day after the competition, the swell Chumbo told us about had yet to arrive, so we instead went to Supertubos. The following day, foggy conditions rendered Nazaré un-filmable, so we instead returned to Supertubos to stack a few more clips. It was hard to be unhappy about spending two days at one of the best barrels in the world, but the towering faces to the north cast shadows over our thoughts.
Balaram Stack, eyeing the ocean. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
On the third day, we’d been told that Nazaré once again wouldn’t fit in the schedule. To be fair, the reason was because Balaram was going to surf Peralta with Rob Machado, so nobody was complaining. However, we arrived at Peralta to find no ridable waves, just ripples lapping over the long rock shelf below. Just like that, Nazaré was back on the table.
Balaram had surfed Nazaré one time before, at the 2018 edition of the Capitulo Perfeito event. That had been a “small” day, which for Nazaré means eight-foot and barreling. Eden had never even seen it in person, but there was no doubt in my mind the Santa Cruz native was up to the challenge. I knew that because, when we arrived at Supertubos the first day, I noticed a handful of other surfers come up and congratulate her. As I watched Eden accept a small receiving line of some of the world’s best barrel-riders, I wondered what was up. It turned out that, just two weeks earlier, she had put out a clip of one of the most intense waves at Cloudbreak I’ve ever seen.
So, there we were, passing rows of Red Bull-decaled skis in the Nazaré harbor, looking for Chumbo. He turned out to be hard to miss, as a massive picture of his face adorned the exterior wall of the Red Bull Athlete Zone, a sort of boathouse-cum-locker room for Nazaré regulars.
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We walked up to find the interior bustling with activity. As it turned out, we happened to arrive on the same day that Gigantes De Nazaré was running and an entire film crew was already set up inside. Perched on one of the skis parked inside was skimboarder Lucas Fink, dressed in full big-wave gear. As he answered questions and posed for pictures, a powerful, wetsuited figure stalked around the perimeter – Kalani Lattanzi. High on the walls behind them, pieces of broken boards were mounted like hunting trophies.
Eden and Balaram immediately disappeared, spirited away by Chumbo and Nazare water safety officer Daniel Rangel. Somehow, in the time between when I exited the car and managed to dodge around the film crew to find them, Balaram already had a wetsuit and life vest on. I arrived as Chumbo was handing him a tow board, which he laid on the ground to get a feel for the stance. Eden disappeared again, then returned wearing her own wetsuit and white rashguard, with the trademark bulges of an inflation vest underneath.
Mr. Stack’s suit was, well, different. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
Though I never found out exactly why, Balaram’s life vest was swapped out and he ended up with a different set of safety gear from the others. Rather than an inflatable vest like the ones Eden and Fink were wearing, his was made of bulky, solid foam. It took three people to wrestle him into the contraption, and when they finally did, he was left covered in massive, tumorous lumps. Rangel explained that it was equivalent of an inflatable vest that had already been activated. If he fell, it would be as if he had pulled his cord before penetrating the water, which would send him skipping down the wave face.
Balaram and Eden Edwards, about to go big. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
During a brief pause in the action, I noticed a look in Eden’s eyes that I hadn’t seen yet – a hint of nervousness. It seemed to be finally hitting her, what she was getting into. “I’m a little scared, because I have never been before, so I don’t really know what to expect,” she told me. “Now that it’s closer, I’m trying to wrap my head around it.”
“I’m super excited,” she continued. “Obviously, we’ve been trying to get here for the last three days, but it’s come to a head and all that. Put your money where your mouth is.”
I asked her about an earlier comment she’d made about pivoting to being a big-wave surfer. “It seems like it’s headed that way,” she replied. “You know, it’s like I’ve found myself in these situations recently and like, I’m amped. I’m down.”
If Balaram was nervous, he didn’t let on. “I don’t know, hopefully I get to test out my lungs on one of these avalanches,” he told me. “I don’t even know how big it is or nothing, but I’m psyched to check it out.”
Mr. Chumbo, always ready. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
Chumbo looked cheerful throughout, but that’s how he always looked. I’d almost never seen him without a smile on his face, even as he’d wandered the athlete’s area on competition day, wearing his wraparound sunglasses that made him look like an F1 driver. I asked him what he was looking out for when taking someone to Nazaré for the first time, expecting the answer to be something about safety. Instead, he replied, “I’m always looking out for them to have fun, a lot of fun, [and] give them this experience here, which is one of the best of my life. I like to share that with everyone”
We split off in the parking lot. Bal and Eden were ushered into a white Renault, to be taken to the jet ski launch. I got in the van with the photographers, headed for the viewing area.
We crested a hill and finally saw the iconic red lighthouse. There were at least 100 people on the road leading up to it and another 100 dotted along the cliffs. They were mostly spectators, interspersed with photographers peering through long lenses at the water below. Upon closer inspection, a few of them quietly spoke into small handheld radios as they intently watched the lineup – spotters for the Jet Ski teams below.
It was surprising just how busy the water actually was. By its nature, Nazaré is a chaotic break, with no predictable takeoff point and waves that can and will arise virtually anywhere in the lineup. In the middle of all that, around ten skis were constantly in motion, whipping surfers in, scooping them up, or making a beeline back for the outside. Behind it all, a boat full of sightseers paced back and forth.
Later on, I asked Eden and Balaram what was going through their heads as they left the docks and towards that lineup. “I was psyched,” said Eden. “They were so well set up and put together, it made me feel pretty taken care of. Then we saw the wave and I was like, ‘Oh, crap.’ It looked so frickin’ big, even from far away.” Looking down from the cliff, I had the same thought.
Balaram, getting comfortable. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
We spotted Balaram, towed behind Chianca’s ski. He confidently towed into his first wave, flew down the face in a graceful arc, then kicked out the back. Instantly, two skis sprinted towards the boiling foam to pick him up. He was in the water for a few seconds at most, but it felt like forever.
As Bal jetted away to safety on the outside, waves continued to roll in. Soon, we saw Lucas Fink’s yellow jersey. He towed into a wave that opened up into a cavernous barrel, prompting whistles from the crowd. Another rider on a red board whipped into a towering double-up. Not a moment went by that there wasn’t somebody towing, riding, or getting picked up by a ski. It was an endless treadmill of 20-foot plus faces, and getting bigger.
Thirty minutes went by before we saw the flash of Eden’s white jersey, once again behind Chianca’s ski. Her first wave was a sloping left. She perched high up on its face and rode it far in – maybe too far. She was still on the face as we watched another double-up start to rise up down the line. Just in time, she pulled up and over the shoulder, before she was crushed by the section.
Again, the skis leapt into action. It was unbelievable just how fast they could get in to position to collect a surfer. Later on, Eden told us how, in the seconds before the ski arrived, she was scrambling as hard as she could to quickly unhook her feet from the tow board’s straps so she could get on the sled. Since tow boards don’t have leashes, if she lost it, she would have had to get worked trying to retrieve it on the beach.
She succeeded, just in time, but now they were far inside with a set headed their way. The ski tore off, veering past a 15-foot ball of foam. A massive unbroken wave rose up directly in front of them, the biggest we’d seen that day. The driver hit the accelerator, racing to scale the face before it was too late. At the last second, he abruptly slowed down, to avoid going airborne as they crested the peak. Behind them, the wave pitched and exploded into another suffocating mass of foam. They made it. They were safe.
Lucas Chumbo, making Nazaré look like Trestles. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
Next, it was Chumbo’s turn. Even before he slammed into his first massive carve, we could see that he was on a totally different level from not only Eden and Balaram, but every other surfer in the water. The others were surviving, but Chumbo was surfing. Rather than position himself with a careful fade, he’d execute 360 chop hop that somehow also managed to place him perfectly back in the pocket. At one point, he made an exit by catapulting himself into a double rodeo flip. He was playful. He was making 30-foot Nazaré look like head-high Trestles.
Then it was Eden’s turn again. Now that Chumbo had seen how she handled her first run, he whipped her into something with more substance for the second. “He would yell and then I knew [to go]” she explained later. “You don’t just let go. You pull yourself as hard as you can up to the rope and then it gives you that extra boost into the wave. The thing is, I’d never even seen it from the beach, [so] I was a little confused on when to fade and when to go down the line. I almost got caught up by the whitewash, because I kind of faded back too far, but ended up pulling it.”
Balaram inserting his air game into the conversation. Photo: Andre Carvalho // Capitulo Perfeito
Balaram was also getting bolder with each wave. He ended his second run with a big air out the back. On his third, he almost got barreled.
Then, seemingly as quickly as it started, it was over. The swell began to drop a bit. Peaks were still rising up out of the water, but not with the same relentless regularity as before. We lost sight of the skis, then got the call that Eden and Balaram were headed back to the docks.
Back at the Athlete Zone, Eden and Balaram emerged from their car, wide-eyed and buzzing. “It was hectic,” Balaram immediately exclaimed. “It was sick.”
When we asked them about what it was like out there, how they felt, now that they’d actually ridden Nazaré, the words started to tumble out. They would excitedly interject into each other’s sentences, unable to contain themselves. They told us about the excitement and awe of arriving at the lineup, the exhilaration of that impossible speed going down the face. More than anything, they wanted to go back.
“It was the fastest, most productive 15 minutes I’ve ever been a part of,” said Balaram. “Fifteen minutes, you get three sick waves and then one of them almost barreled. It was just fun to be able to go that fast and be able to get waves that quickly over and over again. I was like ‘damn, that’s it? I want to keep going.’”
Our quest to reach Nazaré had turned out far more successful than I think any of us had imagined. Then, Eden said something that made me realize it was a journey that was really just beginning: “As of the month of February 2024, I’m a big wave surfer.”
