There are plenty of different waves on planet Earth. There are waves that break on reefs, waves that break on beaches, waves that break around points, and waves created by rushing rivers. There are man-made waves, sound waves, and heat waves. But perhaps the strangest of all the (surfable) waves is the one created by a tidal bore. As a flood tide enters a narrow channel and hits the outgoing river water, it creates a series of powerful waves that can often be downright scary.
Tidal bores can rip trees on the banks from the ground, throwing them around like twigs. But of course, as history has proven, if there is a wave, someone will surf it. The Severn River is home to one such phenomenon, and in this installment of Weird Waves, Dylan Graves joins a whole pile of those someones to figure out just what it’s like to surf a tidal bore. One of those someones happens to be Steve King, the man who holds the World Record for the longest wave surfed: 9.25 miles, or, as Graves puts it, “an hour and fifteen minutes of standing on a surfboard.”
Like everything else worth doing, surfing the Severn bore ain’t exactly easy—the surfing part may be, but everything else sure isn’t. Because of the way the river twists and turns, it’s a race against time to catch a wave, get out, get to the vehicle, and dodge traffic until you get to the next jump in point. And as you’ll see in the video above, it is one of the craziest missions in all of surfing.
