Alex Wippel knows Nazaré. He first laid eyes on the place back in 2012, just a few years after Garrett McNamara received a life-changing proposition from Portuguese officials who wanted to show the world just how big the wave could be. He knew then that he needed to be a part of riding that wave. Part of riding that wave, however, is riding a Jet Ski, and when you mix a heavy vehicle and enormous, difficult-to-read waves… well, there’s going to be a few mishaps. Wippel broke down exactly what happened to him during one particularly scary mishap.
A wave — not the biggest wave we’ve seen at Nazaré, thank goodness — broke on his back as he attempted to outrun it. He was towing a safety sled with a rope dragging, too. When he leapt off the ski, that rope wrapped around his waist. Yeah, the wave wasn’t the huge, but the power of Nazaré is pretty extraordinary.
““I fell off the ski, and the rope got tangled around my waist,” he explained. “She dragged me underwater, and I inflated. I saw the set coming, and it hit me right on the back, but I couldn’t get the rope off my waist, so she dragged me under a second one.”
All ended reasonably well, considering the circumstances and how much worse it could have been, but it’s likely that Wippel will walk away from this accident with even more respect for the place than he already had.
