About an hour and a half north of Lisbon, Portugal, by bus, lies the small coastal town of Nazare. Most people have never heard of the place, but surfers know it. Nazare consistently sees the world’s biggest waves, sometimes breaking at over 80 feet during the peak season from October through March.
In 2011, Garrett McNamara put Nazare on the map when he rode a 78-foot-high wave there, the photo and video of which went viral internationally. His world record stood for six years until Brazilian Rodrigo Koxa broke it, riding a wave of 80 feet. Then, in 2020, the current record of 86 feet was set by German Sebastian Steudtner.
Why are the waves so big at Nazare? A deep underwater channel feeds its north beach, Praia do Norte, with powerful swells traveling long distances from storms in the Atlantic Ocean. The topography of the bottom near the shoreline is shaped in such a way as to amplify and refract those swells, often causing them to unite, doubling or even tripling their sizes when they break.
I’m not a surfer, but water has always intrigued me. As a child, I took swimming lessons at Laurel Pool, then taught myself how to dive and perform stunts off the high board there. I didn’t come out unscathed, hitting both my head and shin on the board, the second accident requiring 42 stitches. In college, I worked as a lifeguard at Laurel Pool, and as manager at the Larchdale Woods Apartments pool.
Fast-forward half a century to last year when, for Forbes, I interviewed McNamara about his acclaimed HBO series, The 100 Foot Wave. At the end of our chat, I casually asked if I met him in Nazare, would he take me out on his tow-in jet ski to ride the giant waves. McNamara said yes, surprisingly, and the rest, well, is the stuff of this story.
Mother Nature is fickle, and there is never any guarantee of good or bad weather, nor of big or small waves. In fact, Nazare saw no giant wave days, an unusual occurrence, in the October 2022–March 2023 season. That said, Brazilian surfer Marcio Freire was killed there in January 2023 in medium-sized waves, so Nazare can be dangerous no matter what size the swells are.
To coincide with McNamara’s arrival, I arrived in Nazare on October 22. The wave forecast for the following week was mostly small-to-medium, except the 27th and 28th, when giant waves were supposed to barrel in, so I had time beforehand to shed my jet lag and explore the town.
At dinner on the 26th with another well-known big wave surfer, Andrew “Cotty” Cotton (he had towed McNamara into his world record ride in 2011), and Cotton’s significant other, the French pro skier Justine Blanc, it was decided that we would attempt our jet ski wave pilgrimage very early on the 28th. According to Blanc, that morning looked to have the biggest swells and the least wind.
The plan was for my photographer, Carlos Toro, to ride on Cotton’s jet ski, staying close to and filming me on McNamara’s. Toro and Cotton were also there in the event that our machine had mechanical problems. Theoretically, with enough time, McNamara and I could abandon our compromised jet ski, and hold onto the sled at the back of theirs.
When my alarm went off at 6 a.m. the morning of the 28th, I could hear the heavy crashes of waves from my Airbnb, almost a mile from shore. I guess the forecasters had been accurate. The primordial sound gave me goosebumps.
When we met up at 7:30 a.m., Cotton and McNamara gave me a wet suit and life jacket, then we all headed down to the harbor to gas up the jet skis. Once in the water, the rough chop on the beach south of Nazare’s lighthouse was surprisingly large, eclipsing 10 feet. This is the beach where tourists usually swim. Not today, even if it was summer.
While seated just behind McNamara on the jet ski, my only other point of contact was a single strap directly in front of me. I held on tight with both hands, trying to keep my balance. The vehicle violently rocked side-to-side, and up-and-down, like a bucking bronco, as we made our way to the north beach where the really big surf lurked.
And boy, was it big. The waves, as we approached from the side, resembled giant snow-capped peaks gliding across the ocean. When we entered the heaviest surf area, McNamara wasted no time. He quickly pulled alongside a 40-footer as it was ready to break. I had never seen anything like it up so close and personal—a pulsating four-story apartment building. Cotton and Toros kept their distance for safety reasons.
I looked around. Tons of other waves were breaking, too. I yelled at McNamara to saddle up to something taller, if possible. He asked if I was serious. I said yes, and off we went. He is a wild man. When we found a swell that was in the 60-foot range, McNamara actually pulled up on top and rode along the horizontal length of the crest just before it broke. He screamed at me to look down, to my right.
Time stopped. What I saw was surreal: A precipitous drop to the bottom of a vertical wall of greenish blue. I could have dropped a quarter, and it would have skipped six stories down the wave face into the ocean. It’s a view I’ll never forget. McNamara then veered the ski left, toward the water behind the breaking wave, so as not to get sucked up into the barrel and taken over the falls.
Then things got crazy. Suddenly, the ski tipped when I leaned too far left, the same way McNamara was leaning, and we were catapulted into the ocean. Luckily, the heavy machine stayed near us, floating on its side, and our life jackets kept us afloat. McNamara immediately tried to right the thing, but to no avail. So I swam over and helped him rock the ski toward us. After a few back-and-forths, it flipped into an upright position.
With urgency, McNamara jumped on, fired up the ski and yelled at me to hang on to the sled at the back rather than try to board. Seconds were precious, and we had to high-tail it out of there before the next set of monster waves were upon us. A scary minute seemed like an hour, I can tell you.
When we were safely back in the harbor a few minutes later, McNamara confided that he had chosen the last wave in our set of four to ride the top of. That gave us time if something unforeseen happened, like the jet ski flipping. Had there been another giant wave directly following the one we had capsized behind, and Nazare is unpredictable, I might not be writing this.
In McNamara’s garage, we took showers to remove the salt water, then enjoyed espressos from his gourmet coffeemaker. We laughed and high-fived each other, but each of us knew how easily the experience that morning could have gone south. What if water had gone into the engine intake, and the jet ski hadn’t restarted? Or if McNamara or myself had been knocked unconscious? Or if the ski had simply floated away from us?
McNamara said that he’s ridden so many big waves that often he feels little to no adrenaline rush these days while doing so. When the ski flipped, he confessed, he definitely felt the chemical kick in. God was watching out for us, I guess.
Thankfully, the only casualty was my glasses, which flew off when we were tossed into the water, and must now be in God-knows-how-many-pieces at the bottom of Nazare’s deep channel.
The ocean has tremendous power, and, at Praia do Norte, it’s to be particularly respected. So are the brave folks like Cotton and McNamara who choose to surf it. Both have been seriously injured at Nazare but keep coming back. Having experienced the top of such monsters on a jet ski myself, I can only imagine what these guys feel surfing down the face.
Of all of my extreme adventures, and there have been quite a few, this has to rank in the top five. Never before have I felt as awed by, and afraid of, nature at the same time—not on the summit of the Matterhorn, in the vacuum at the edge of space 84,000 feet up in a supersonic MiG-25, chasing tornadoes, or at the frigid South Pole.
For this one, I was thankful for the swimming and lifeguarding skills I had acquired in Laurel. Whether they made a physical difference, I’m not sure, but they did give me enough confidence not to panic in a dangerous situation.
Jim Clash immerses himself in extreme adventures for Forbes magazine. He graduated from Laurel High School in 1973. His latest book is Amplified: Interviews With Icons of Rock ‘n’ Roll.