100 Foot Wave (2021) s01e02 Episode Script
We're Not Surfers
That's what you want to run away from.
2007, we're doing some documentaries with Deep Water Films.
Ryan Casey says, I got this idea.
So he emails me a video and it's this glacier caves off.
And creates this perfect wave.
How big was what we just saw? It came from the top, so it's about 300 feet high.
The chunks that were flying across the river are probably the size of the vans here.
We went up there and scouted and it looked totally doable.
We get in the water the first day.
An overwhelming, terrifying fear just consumed me.
I visualized myself on the bottom of the river bed squashed under this massive piece of ice.
It just was so overwhelming that I threw in the towel.
And I said, we're out of here.
I don't know what's wrong with my partner.
I think he's scared.
He's got a little scariness in his eyes.
I called my wife and I'm crying on the phone.
And I'm like, I want to get out of here.
This is too much.
Please hold hands and say a prayer for me and Keali'i and everybody else up here.
It was really dangerous.
And I love you guys.
And then my partner, Keali'i, who's usually the guy who's real cautious, was like: "Don't worry.
We're going to be fine.
" Sure enough, the next day I felt better and we went back out.
We were sitting there for hours waiting under this glacier, as she creaks and cracks and it's like a horror movie.
Shit! Holy shit! It was spooky.
But we made it.
I got it! We were there for seven days, riding waves and having fun.
It was amazing.
So I go back home and now I go back into the big waves and everything was like, so comfortable.
The fear in the ocean disappeared.
So I couldn't get that adrenaline rush.
And I surf for the rush.
So I thought okay, maybe if I ride this a hundred foot wave, I'll get the rush again.
And so I quickly got on that mission to try and find and ride the hundred foot wave.
Check out these monster 100 foot waves off Portugal.
The biggest wave ever surfed as high as 100 feet.
To put that into perspective, that is taller than an eight story building.
Surfers are always looking for the next great thing.
It often breaks those brave or crazy board riders.
Severe wipeouts and waves of mind boggling height.
What happens here happens nowhere else in the world.
The biggest wave ever surfed.
100 foot wave.
100 FOOT WAVE Chapter 2 We're not surfers Measuring big waves is complex yet simple.
What you've got to understand is measuring a wave is very different from measuring a mountain.
That mountain's not going to move.
You can go back and measure it today, tomorrow or next week.
The wave is only there for that fraction of a second.
And there's nothing you can ever do to bring it back.
The proper way to measure a wave, that the big wave surf community has agreed on, one takes the best photo image of a wave and decides where the bottom of the wave is and where the top of the wave is.
Then taking a guy who's on the wave, surfing it, and guesstimating how tall he's standing in the photo, because remember he's crouched down as low as he can be.
And then literally placing him from the bottom to the top, counting as many times as you can, multiply it by the supposed height of the surfer and you have the size of the wave.
So it's really nebulous.
And I would say unclear and controversial.
It's almost impossible to measure a wave.
It's all subjective.
We can't agree as surfers what a three-foot wave is, but when you're talking waves that could be 50, 60, 70, 80 feet, and there's no actual facts, no actual data, then how do you measure something to a foot? That's an impossible task.
Measuring a wave, especially when it comes to giving out awards and making a world record wave, it's really tricky.
It's just this wave, this moving thing.
In 2010, I knew we stumbled across something super special like nowhere else in the world.
I knew that the biggest waves in the world were going to be ridden there.
So me and Nicole came back the next year.
Last year, we came with no expectations.
Left with hopes and dreams, and those hopes and dreams are now going to be reality.
During the next two months, first is getting ready physically, mentally, spiritually to ride the biggest wave ever ridden.
So 2011 was our second year in Portugal.
We would make these blueprints all the time, like where we'd write our goals at the top.
And the only thing we would ever really write at the top is the hundred foot wave.
That's what you're going to be doing every day, playing in the whitewater.
In 2011, there was no doubts that Garrett was interested in coming back because he understood what he discovered here.
The only doubt was if he was coming more prepared with more guys and who was coming to help.
CJ, I trained him in Florida.
The surfing, he has down.
He'll do really, really well on the wave surfing.
Driving, he's going to need a lot of training.
How are you guys? - The waves are perfect.
- Right now? All the time.
Left and right.
I came last year and Garrett towed me into a couple of really good waves.
I got hooked.
It was a no-brainer to come back this year.
I plan on building a surfing career, starting from this, and I'm going to catch the wave of my life for sure in these next couple of months.
Just focus from here to there.
So that year, there was a lot of focus on Garret training CJ.
I'm feeling really confident with the ski.
It's just going to come down to, once it gets big.
In 2011, I really was planted here, waiting for the waves to come.
And then eventually the day came where the swell was picking up.
We drove out onto the lighthouse and looked out over the cliff and it wasn't big by today's standards, but by my standards, it was big and stormy.
Take CJ out into the water for the first time.
Test his skills and get his sea legs.
- So you ready? - Of course I'm ready.
I've been waiting for this moment for a long time.
I'm probably gonna catch the biggest wave I've ever caught today.
You are feeling pretty confident.
Yeah, confident.
Heart's pumping for sure, but it's good nerves.
I like it.
Now it's time to go make it happen.
Go catch some waves.
It was the biggest we had really surfed up until that point.
I just felt these nerves come up.
Once you decide to drop in and the thing goes to break, you're flying down the face and all of a sudden you're going way faster than you thought you'd be going.
It's like, oh my God, why am I on this thing? But there's no turning back.
We're just shot out of the rocket.
The only way through is forward.
Got a bunch of good waves and then at the end, got a good, solid pounding.
I came off on that one.
And then there was probably another six, seven waves behind it.
And I was just floored.
Whooped.
It was just the grinding, the grinding, the pounding.
That was tough.
CJ! We realized very quickly, we really need somebody on the cliff, like the eyes in the sky, basically.
Because the waves are so big, that they can't really see what's happening from the trough of the wave.
And if somebody goes down, you can't tell if it was left or right.
You're getting sucked up north or towards the south, towards the rocks.
So it started out as safety.
My job was only to say who fell, where they fell, which way where they were going and keep everybody safe.
When we go out surfing in Nazaré, Nicole's biggest role is to be up on the lighthouse with the walkie-talkie to radio to us.
She's really helpful in finding people, if someone wipes out.
If someone's in the impact zone, we know how to get to them.
And then they started to get really greedy.
So it's evolved into, you know, where's the set coming? Which one should I go for? How many are there? Tell me which one to go for.
You've got a big set outside.
Keep telling me where you see the best waves.
I can hear you perfect.
Garrett and the whole crew there in Nazaré really led the way in developing a lot of systems for big wave surfing.
And one of them is the use of spotters, which really has become very important in tow surfing.
It might seem like chaos.
We've got people barking orders, but it's a very choreographed dance that's taking place.
Nicole is the scale.
She is the intelligence within the madness surrounding big wave surfing.
And thank God that's there.
Because the adrenaline involved in big wave surfing is always like: "Go, go! Fast, fast, fast! More, more, more!" She's the other side of the scale.
Garrett is risk.
"Let's do it.
Fast!" Nicole is: "Let's think about it.
Let's see how it works.
" She's the balance that keeps things from breaking down.
Good lefts right here.
Let's practice putting me on some waves.
The first few times we went out with me towing him, it was kind of just madness.
Always sideways.
Never in, never out.
I found it pretty stressful to be just kinda tossed into that with Garrett.
Pretty much expected me to tow him in and put them on waves.
These rights you were putting me on right here? That's what you want? These rights you were putting me on? CJ tried to tow me on a few waves, but it seemed like he was afraid.
A couple moments of miscommunication with Garrett.
And a couple hairy rescues.
Go, go, go! Go that way.
That way! Hey, how's my head? Shit! You're okay.
A little blood.
A little bit of blood.
You're okay.
- I'm cut? - Little bit.
Nice! That's a lot of blood.
Right when you grabbed the board Yeah, I felt it hit you.
There's just miscommunication.
He didn't know what I wanted him to do.
And I'm pretty loud, and I'm going "over here, over there".
So it was a bit chaotic.
We weren't like that, it was like this.
We definitely need another driver.
I don't know why Garrett chose me and asked me to come with him that year and drive like that in a place that nobody had done it before, a spot where he should have like some seasoned veteran.
I think at that point, Garrett was pretty over big wave surf scene in general.
Once we discovered Nazaré, the surfing world discredited it and said it was a fat mushy mush burger that wasn't really a wave.
People at first wanted to dismiss it as even being a good, big wave.
It's stormy.
It's cold.
Like why would anyone want to go there? Nazaré, in the beginning, wasn't respected.
All of us thought that it was just like this random spot that does something that makes it look better than it is.
That wave's a pretty messy wave.
It's all crossed up and it's got a lot of stuff going on.
I put my career and my life on the line while everybody kept saying it wasn't a wave.
So that hurt a lot.
I can remember just hoping that Garrett would call.
I wanted to come back.
2010 was an introduction and realizing the potential.
And 2011 was just opportunity.
- We'll have fun, Andrew.
- Yeah.
We've got the second ski.
Look at these rights coming in.
- Are you ready for action? - Yeah, it's looking good.
I'm frothing.
Can't wait.
We called Cotty back cause I really loved his energy, his willingness to do whatever needed to be done whenever it needed to be done.
And we were a team, really good synergy.
When Cotty showed up, it was great because I'm getting to see how Garrett does it with some more experienced guys, how they like to drive.
Took a lot of pressure off of me.
We were all still learning how to drive a ski at Nazaré.
Garrett was basically training us.
He wanted it done right, and he wanted it done his way.
Sometimes he'd be shouting from the rope, like when you're towing it.
And that's kind of hard to keep your cool and sort of not react or focus on what you're doing.
Even when you rescued him, he'd be shouting at you.
You're scared, you're stressed.
And then you got Garrett's shouting at you to top it all off.
The toughest part about tow surfing is being dependent on a partner.
It is very similar to a marriage.
You have to deal with the personalities, the good, the bad and the ugly.
I'm a very fast track focus.
I know what I want, but I change very quickly as well.
So it's probably very hard for somebody to be my partner.
If Garrett could have towed himself, he would have.
And fortunately he couldn't.
So he needed me.
Nazaré is not only a place that requires the surfers to be world-class.
It requires the jet ski operators to be beyond world-class.
I mean, galactic class, I think.
It's easily the hardest place in the world to drive a jet ski because you have to keep going through the whitewater.
The jet ski was not designed to drive through this aerated foam.
So you'll often get a spot where you don't have traction, you're stuck in the mud.
It's like being stuck in the mud with an avalanche coming after you.
It's really the most dangerous place in the world to be in big wave surfing.
You have to have a lot of experience and confidence, but you also have to be ready for something to go wrong.
- How are you doing? - I got slammed so hard.
What happened? I saw you flying like crazy.
I landed on my face.
It felt like I was falling on concrete as well.
That hurt.
That was stupid.
I should have just fucking gone straight.
- Did you go too high? - Just to try to get off the back.
I should've just gone with it.
It would have been so easy to say I don't want it.
You have shockers some days where everything's going wrong.
And you want to give it all up.
There's a lot of times when you ask: "What the hell am I doing?" Like this isn't fun.
The plumbing job seems like it could be such an easier option.
I could just go back and do a normal job.
Well, he was always a little daredevil.
He wouldn't see any fear, really.
- Always in scrapes, shall we say.
- But a boy.
Proper boy.
His asthma stopped him from participating in running sports.
But we encouraged to swim because we were told that swimming was good for his condition.
My parents bought me a surfboard when I was like seven or eight.
Growing up in Devon, the people you saw most were the people at your local beach.
Croyde had a strong scene.
It was quite a good community.
The local guys, always a bit older.
They're the guys I sort of looked up to.
I wanted to be better than them.
The last stretch and this guy's about to take home the silverware in front of the home crowd.
At that point, surfing was just a hobby.
It was never thought to be a career path.
So I worked in the surf industry and just traveled a lot.
I worked to travel and surf.
I never thought I'm going to get to do this full time.
It was just, chase a swell, go back to work, chase another swell.
My dad tried to steer me away from it.
"When are you going to get a real job?" Which is why I did the plumbing.
That was my dad's thing.
"You've got to have a profession, a skill or trade," "and the surfing isn't it.
And it's never going to be.
" I think I might have forced him into being a plumber.
I don't know whether he resented me for that.
But he resented plumbing, there's no doubt about it.
I got into this rhythm where I was like working six days a week and I just felt myself going down this path.
I started looking into the future and I could see myself like sitting in the pub at like 50, 60 saying I could have done that, but I didn't.
I really didn't want to be that guy sitting there.
Kind of made me like sort of wake up a bit.
All right, don't be that guy that could have done something, but didn't.
When I got to Nazaré, things just gelled.
Everything just fell into place at the right time.
In late October 2011, a massive storm appeared on weather maps.
There's different weather sites that we look at.
And when a storm comes up, it's a blob on the map.
When the blob is red, it's going to be big.
Nazaré doesn't create those really good rideable waves every single day.
It's a really complex sort of calculation of the swell period, the swell angle, the height, the wind.
All these variables have to come together for these giant waves to show up.
Until 2011, we had never seen a red blob that big.
I was parked outside a fish factory on the west coast of Ireland.
My phone rang and it was an American number.
I immediately knew it was Garrett McNamara.
And he said Al, there's a really big swell coming.
I think this is the one.
Can you come down? When I got to Nazaré, there's an air of excitement, but there is definitely an air of what is coming because although we'd been out there and we'd surfed big waves, we felt that this was possibly going to be the biggest ever.
Everything's good.
Everything's ready.
We got Andrew Cotton, Al Mennie, CJ.
And we're going to get a giant wave.
I don't remember sleeping very well that night.
I was thinking about what's gonna happen tomorrow.
I remember lying there and I heard a noise.
I kept thinking what's that noise? And I was listening.
It was the surf breaking on the shore with such force it was making the door tremble.
Every now and again it would be Of all the nights I've been here, I've never experienced this before.
I really started to wonder, is this really going to happen tomorrow? Are we about to see the biggest surf ever in the history of surfing? Woke up early this morning.
Checked the buoys, checked the swell.
Looks really promising.
We're going to be riding the biggest waves we've ever seen.
Thierry Donard was there.
He makes those movies mainly about heli skiing.
And he had rented a helicopter because we thought it was going to be the biggest day ever.
I used to hear about this canyon a long time ago.
And Garrett told me the project had decided to come with him to do the shooting.
There's no point to surf the biggest wave in the world if nobody films it.
Amazing! Good to get a perspective of what's going on from up there.
The setup we had was absolutely avant garde.
The challenge is not only the way to surf.
The challenge is to get the right jet-ski, the right crew.
Guys, what are you thinking about the swell that is coming? Don't know what to say before a swell.
Don't want to jinx anything.
We're not surfers.
We're gladiators.
Nazaré to me seems to be unique.
And it's got the fear factor, that's for sure.
It's all exploration, we haven't done this before.
The biggest swell that I've seen, and we're just going to see where we can go, how far we can push it.
What stood out with Garrett those first few years was his mindset, his belief in like anything's possible, the fact the waves come to you and how you can manifest the moment with energy and visualization.
I don't get butterflies.
I don't get nervous.
I've surfed the waves so many times in my mind, just a matter of it coming.
I threw these figures around.
40 foot waves, 50 foot waves, 60 foot waves, hundred foot waves, right? That's very difficult to understand if you don't know anything about surfing.
The best way to think about it is if you're in an apartment block, look out the window.
That's the size of these waves.
It's like mother nature, isn't it? You can feel the energy.
It doesn't matter how strong you are or how well you can swim.
There's no amount of training that can prepare you for that.
We filmed all day and it was massive.
It was super fun.
We were catching beautiful waves.
Wave after wave, after wave.
You and your friends out in the middle of the ocean, riding these giant waves.
Just like a dream.
For me, it was a dream.
This place is amazing.
It's unique in the world.
I'd never seen a wave like this.
I couldn't believe this happened.
I was on the backup ski waiting patiently and they're surfing and they're doing their thing.
And then the moment comes, and Garrett's like, you ready to surf? So I get on the rope.
I see this massive thing rolling in from the ocean.
He puts me on it.
I ended up thankfully right in the sweet spot.
When you're in the sweet spot, you're dancing with danger.
One little mistake and you're too far back on the wave and it will swallow you.
And then going too fast and you're kind of out of the spot.
It was definitely the biggest wave that I've ridden and it was ridden well, ridden in the sweet spot, as best as I could.
That was amazing.
It lights me up to think about that.
Watching Garrett and CJ riding this wave.
What's it like from the cliff? When I get stuck in my head and I start thinking about things, I've got to make a point to like stop myself and really focus my thoughts on what I want to happen.
Not on other things.
Because it's two people that I love more than anything in the world, my brother and Garrett.
So seeing them do something together, something in the ocean and something they both love so much, it's incredible.
Then there's the other side of it too.
You're not there to conquer it.
You're there just to experience it briefly and get out of there.
It was pretty amazing.
No one conquers the ocean, it just doesn't happen.
You fly with it very briefly.
And if you're lucky, then it'll let you go.
It's probably one of the best feelings ever.
You learn a lot about yourself because you're putting yourself in positions and situations that you shouldn't necessarily be in.
At Nazaré in particular, there are waves that come through that sometimes you know you shouldn't go on, but your heart is telling you something else.
And often it's those waves which are the most rewarding.
But those waves are definitely the most dangerous.
At the end of the day, Al lost his board so Garrett had to go to the inside and pick him up.
Garrett came to rescue me.
And a wave stood up in front of us.
And this wave was coming.
When I thought I could make it And as he climbed the wave, he decided at the last minute we weren't going to make it.
And it just kind of caught us over the falls, upside down and backward.
I jumped off.
He bailed, but I didn't know this.
The ski goes up and I'm still holding on to it.
Then Then Cotty comes in, grabs me, takes me to the beach.
Cotton took Garrett in, put him on the beach, and came back and got me.
Then, Garrett and I were on the beach, and we've got local guys trying to help us get the ski out of the water.
Paulo and all those guys are down in there.
They want to rescue the ski because we need the ski.
Meanwhile, Cotton was out trying to go to the harbor.
But at some point he got knocked from the jet ski.
I just got washed off it.
Literally I couldn't hang on.
Garrett and I didn't know this.
We were standing on the beach.
All we could see was these huge waves breaking.
And so now he's out there on his own.
And the jet ski is literally going around and getting away from him.
And I was like, this is it.
I'm in the middle of it.
And I just grabbed the side of the sled and climbed upon.
And it was still running.
And I just made it out.
And if I'd lost it, that would've been the worst.
I was like miles from shore, stuck right in that middle.
Can't be complacent, gotta be focused.
When the waves are smaller, you can get away with slip ups, nobody dies and maybe a little hurt here and there.
But once we start playing with bigger and bigger Nazaré waves, those mistakes, you pay, you really pay.
Teamwork in Nazaré is so important.
Everyone needs to be sort of gelled.
Having one tow team and one rescue guy, even that isn't enough.
It doesn't matter how good we are on the ski.
You can still panic.
We cannot predict how everything will happen in the moment.
Something can go wrong.
Cotty, I wasn't gonna say anything, but I saw Al coming up and I just noticed that you picked Garrett before him and he might be pissed.
He was the first person I saw.
And I was going to stop and pick Al up.
But Garrett was like, just get him to the beach.
Hey Cotton! Heard you went to get Garrett before me.
I didn't see you, I couldn't see you.
I'm fucking green and orange! That's exactly what happened.
He left me, but he took the old man.
We get the ski off the beach.
We got a tractor in place, brought it back to the harbor.
And then I'm working on the ski all night cause I knew there was going to be waves the next day.
It was about to start.
And then it exploded and caught on fire.
The ski was totalled.
Garrett was beat up.
Then we just left it, went home.
I was defeated, I guess you could call it.
The next day was a pretty strange feeling day.
There was this kind of ominous feeling.
It was a kind of a heavy feeling of the day.
And the next morning, Garrett's like, I'm not even going surfing today.
I want nothing to do with it.
There was no plan.
We probably don't have conditions to do nothing.
So no stress.
Let's see what happens.
When we see the first light, we understand.
Hey, wait a minute.
This is perfection.
And it was a perfect morning.
On that day, the sea was like clean, beautiful blue.
It was like the perfect conditions.
Al Mennie and Cotty, they went to wake up Garrett.
I remember Cotton and I had to go to his hotel room to see Garrett and get Garrett.
Normally Garrett was there.
He was ready to go.
And this morning was slightly different from memory.
I was usually the guy who gets up super early and excited.
I was pretty exhausted.
And the boys came.
"Come on, It's bigger, it's better.
Let's go.
" "We can't go out without you.
" And I said, okay, I'll go.
But I'm just driving.
We're in the warehouse.
Everybody's suiting up.
And I remember walking up to everybody.
Look, I'll go out there with you guys, but we're going out there pure and simple for the love of it.
For fun.
Just to go have fun.
Surf for the right reasons, just to do what we want to do.
Not for anybody else, except for ourselves.
Not for this, not for that.
Just to go get waves and have fun and do what we want to do.
I was on the lighthouse with Paulo and Pitbull.
There was nobody at the lighthouse, it was like empty.
It was just us.
There's no other surfers there.
There's no other l film crew there.
It was just a magical day.
I think Al surfed first.
Al Mennie caught a couple waves, then he lost his board.
Cotty caught a couple waves, maybe even one wave and then lost his board.
So we're going back out and then they're: "Garrett, you go, you go.
" I really didn't feel like surfing and I'm like, no, I'm good.
I think it was me.
I think I actually said to him, come on, you may as well get a couple anyway.
Luckily I had my board out there just in case.
Cotty tried to tow me into one, but I didn't go.
Nothing really felt right.
And I'm just like, I'm not feeling it.
So I do my breathe up, resetting.
And I open my eyes and I reconnect.
Right after I did that, Nicole gets on the walkie-talkie.
Big set, big set.
Giant! Cotty pulls me up on the rope and then everything felt good.
I was on the rope like this new man.
And then I see this biggest wave I've seen.
Whole horizon.
And then Nicole says: "That was it! That's the biggest wave.
" "Come in, go to the harbor.
" Time to go to the harbor! Let's go make a baby! After the way it was ridden, they didn't surf more.
All of us that were there, we knew that something special had happened.
When we first arrived at the harbor, the look on their faces was evident.
Whatever just happened, it was obviously something out of this world.
And at the time I knew it.
I had the best view, obviously, because I was sitting right there.
And I could see the whole big slope of the wave.
He was just charging down it.
So focused, looking straight down the thing.
I just remember looking and going, oh my God, that is a beast.
Like I've seen big waves all around the world at that point.
And being there at that moment in time, I was in no doubt that this was the biggest wave ever ridden.
At some point I knew that I think I have something special in my camera and I was stressing.
Because people were asking me: "Can you show me?" No, I cannot show anybody now.
I need to go home, back up this file and then I can show everybody.
When I back up like three times, guys, let's enjoy, let's see the wave on the computer.
I remember standing in the apartment.
All the guys had all their laptops all around the table.
And seeing the image was incredible.
It's not until you see a photograph, a flattened image, a 2D image, where you're this big and the wave it was this big, where you can actually go, oh my goodness, that's massive.
It was substantially bigger than anything that day or that we had ever seen.
It was just insane.
There was no doubt that he knew it was the biggest wave ever surfed.
Everybody just felt a lot of accomplishment.
Like, we did it.
We knew that that wave was going to be enough to prove to the world that Nazaré was the biggest wave in the world.
Garrett rode the biggest wave.
There's absolutely no doubt about it.
And he should be the one that gets the credit for that.
However, there was multiple local men involved in making that happen.
In fact, I think the local men in Nazaré and the structure and the setup and the vision probably play more of a vital role in the surfers being able to surf at Nazaré than the surfers themselves too.
We are all outsiders.
There's an American, an Irishman, and an Englishman.
We're not local Portuguese people.
We don't own anything.
The Portuguese own that, and they should take ownership of it and they should be the proudest ones of it all.
It was definitely for me, one of the best days of the project.
We felt extremely proud.
We understood that was a special moment and we need to send this clip everywhere.
They sent it out to ESPN first.
ESPN got ahold of it and just blew it up, ran with it.
Garrett McNamara.
Down in Portugal, Garrett was towed into a rogue wave at the North Canyon.
And then the world ran with it.
Now here's something that you just have to see to believe.
While you were at work surfing the web yesterday, Garrett McNamara was surfing one of the biggest waves in the world.
The definition of risk-taking nerve, a surfer riding a moving mountain of water off of Portugal, smashing the record for the largest wave ever surfed.
- Look at him go.
- Unbelievable.
That blip right there on the top of the wave, that's extreme surfer Garrett McNamara.
Surfer Garrett McNamara.
Garrett McNamara claims that he has now served the biggest wave ever.
Was this a new record? Well, we won't know until the spring.
That's when they announce the official measurement.
It was a snowball effect of media, media.
That wave was like an endless mountain.
I could never get to the bottom.
It was wild.
We didn't sleep for three days because of all the interviews and the different time zones.
Half the people think I'm out of my mind.
I think they all think I'm crazy actually.
What we wanted to do with this story was to take the viewer as close as most people will ever get to a big wave.
There's a moment where I look back and you actually see this wave coming down.
Anderson Cooper became like a friend.
I will never forget his description of what it's like to ride a big wave.
You let go of the rope and you come down.
It's like riding the thing.
Sucks, it double sucks.
Down a building.
It's gonna barrel.
But the building's collapsing on top of you.
And then you just make it through.
So that was my impression of Garrett.
The news catching wind of it created a lot of excitement.
With that wave just has come so much exposure.
The largest and meanest waves in the world slam into a headland in Portugal called Nazaré.
That was the moment when all eyes came on Nazaré.
The doors blew open and everybody could see in and see these waves are the biggest in the world.
And there's the guys that are doing it.
There's no turning back at that point.
It just kind of went viral after that.
And then we put it into the XXL awards.
The idea behind the XXL Big Wave Awards was to elevate the status of big wave surfing.
Here's these guys riding 50 foot waves and what do they get? They get a little picture in Surfer Magazine and their buddies buy him a beer at the end of the day cause they rode the biggest wave of the day or maybe even the year.
So we proclaimed someone as being the champion that rode the biggest wave of the year.
And the winner is Garrett McNamara.
First I'd like to thank the town of Nazaré in Portugal.
That is my family and the people are just so amazing there.
It's the best kept secret in Europe, in the world for that matter.
Biggest waves I've ever seen.
And I'd really like to thank Nicole, my love over there.
Thank you for everything, Nicole.
We have a nail-biting new world record to tell you about.
A new Guinness world record for 44-year-old Garrett McNamara.
His ride just officially becoming one for the record books.
The folks at the Guinness book have certified the wave is 78 feet tall.
Ruling that McNamara holds the title for the largest wave ever surfed.
That is the key moment to all of this.
Until then, nobody on the other side of the world would believe that Nazaré would have the biggest waves in the world.
Nobody would believe in us.
And from that point on, when that wave started to appear everywhere, nobody could ignore Nazaré.
The place is called the Nazaré Canyon.
That is just unbelievable.
The wave came and Garrett rode it and I knew it was really, really big.
I was really hoping it was like, about 10 to 15 feet bigger.
The real job would have been done, but now we still are waiting for one out there.
Is there a little bit of envy about not catching that wave? No.
I drove Garrett into a world record wave.
I couldn't have been more stoked.
Are you kidding me? Having that opportunity to do that, that is a career highlight.
I think that's the quite unique thing about big wave surfing, it's not always going to be you surfing it.
You're in the team.
Garrett was towing me 10 minutes before that world record wave.
If he wouldn't have seen the wave and towed me, he would have done exactly the same.
Sometimes it does seem unfair that it's just the surfer that gets the recognition.
But I never at any point was like jealous or bitter.
I was like quite the opposite.
Garrett had the objective to be the one to ride the biggest wave.
And that's what happened.
And I almost felt like it was meant to be in this strange way.
But you can never predict who will be the one that gets it.
Some days when there's multiple massive waves ridden, it's almost unfair to say, such and such rode the biggest one when everybody else also rode equally gigantic waves, that might've been a foot bigger or a foot smaller.
But on this day, Garrett's wave, without a doubt, was the biggest of the day.
He was the one in the place at the time.
Cotty spun right onto the wave, put Garrett right in the center of it.
And he looked like he was in the perfect spot at the perfect time.
Couldn't have been better.
It was perfect.
- Say perfect one more time.
- Perfect! You and Al were tow partners for quite a few years, weren't you? Yeah, we had a good few years together.
The reason Cotton and I have got so far with it and feel so confidently with it is because we've always been together.
And a lot of the guys out there, maybe they haven't got a solid partner, they change partners a lot.
Cotton and I have always been together.
It's made us a good team.
It's made us strong.
Whenever Garrett and I came off the ski the other day, I knew he was coming in somewhere.
I knew in my mind, that whatever he could do, he would get to me.
And you don't have that trust in everybody.
And you need to have that belief and bond with somebody.
At the time, it felt like you and Cotty were a unit.
Was there a reason that you stopped working together? I can't comment on his reasons and his actions and what decisions he took with his surfing career.
For me, I wanted to return to Ireland and focus on my own projects.
He clearly wanted to focus on something else.
That's up to him.
I've gone back to Nazaré a few times, but it's definitely not my focal point.
There's far more to life than focusing on one big wave spot in the world.
In my personal opinion.
We did like two seasons down in Portugal.
And then he wanted to spend more time sort of just in Ireland.
Al had a business and work commitments.
I didn't have a business.
I knew I didn't want to be a plumber.
I just saw it as an opportunity.
It was now or never.
To have that opportunity to surf with Garrett and tow him and be taught by him, I wasn't going to pass it up.
When Garrett broke the world record, I knew at that point in my surfing career that I wasn't ready.
I couldn't have surfed that wave like Garrett surfed it.
Wouldn't have surfed it like he surfed it.
But now I could surf that wave how I want to surf it.
I'm more ready now.
At some point, I want to have that ride.
I want to get that wave of my life.
I'll be devastated if I don't get an opportunity to have that moment, to have that wave.
There will be the day when you put it all on the line.
When the day comes, it's just being ready.
2007, we're doing some documentaries with Deep Water Films.
Ryan Casey says, I got this idea.
So he emails me a video and it's this glacier caves off.
And creates this perfect wave.
How big was what we just saw? It came from the top, so it's about 300 feet high.
The chunks that were flying across the river are probably the size of the vans here.
We went up there and scouted and it looked totally doable.
We get in the water the first day.
An overwhelming, terrifying fear just consumed me.
I visualized myself on the bottom of the river bed squashed under this massive piece of ice.
It just was so overwhelming that I threw in the towel.
And I said, we're out of here.
I don't know what's wrong with my partner.
I think he's scared.
He's got a little scariness in his eyes.
I called my wife and I'm crying on the phone.
And I'm like, I want to get out of here.
This is too much.
Please hold hands and say a prayer for me and Keali'i and everybody else up here.
It was really dangerous.
And I love you guys.
And then my partner, Keali'i, who's usually the guy who's real cautious, was like: "Don't worry.
We're going to be fine.
" Sure enough, the next day I felt better and we went back out.
We were sitting there for hours waiting under this glacier, as she creaks and cracks and it's like a horror movie.
Shit! Holy shit! It was spooky.
But we made it.
I got it! We were there for seven days, riding waves and having fun.
It was amazing.
So I go back home and now I go back into the big waves and everything was like, so comfortable.
The fear in the ocean disappeared.
So I couldn't get that adrenaline rush.
And I surf for the rush.
So I thought okay, maybe if I ride this a hundred foot wave, I'll get the rush again.
And so I quickly got on that mission to try and find and ride the hundred foot wave.
Check out these monster 100 foot waves off Portugal.
The biggest wave ever surfed as high as 100 feet.
To put that into perspective, that is taller than an eight story building.
Surfers are always looking for the next great thing.
It often breaks those brave or crazy board riders.
Severe wipeouts and waves of mind boggling height.
What happens here happens nowhere else in the world.
The biggest wave ever surfed.
100 foot wave.
100 FOOT WAVE Chapter 2 We're not surfers Measuring big waves is complex yet simple.
What you've got to understand is measuring a wave is very different from measuring a mountain.
That mountain's not going to move.
You can go back and measure it today, tomorrow or next week.
The wave is only there for that fraction of a second.
And there's nothing you can ever do to bring it back.
The proper way to measure a wave, that the big wave surf community has agreed on, one takes the best photo image of a wave and decides where the bottom of the wave is and where the top of the wave is.
Then taking a guy who's on the wave, surfing it, and guesstimating how tall he's standing in the photo, because remember he's crouched down as low as he can be.
And then literally placing him from the bottom to the top, counting as many times as you can, multiply it by the supposed height of the surfer and you have the size of the wave.
So it's really nebulous.
And I would say unclear and controversial.
It's almost impossible to measure a wave.
It's all subjective.
We can't agree as surfers what a three-foot wave is, but when you're talking waves that could be 50, 60, 70, 80 feet, and there's no actual facts, no actual data, then how do you measure something to a foot? That's an impossible task.
Measuring a wave, especially when it comes to giving out awards and making a world record wave, it's really tricky.
It's just this wave, this moving thing.
In 2010, I knew we stumbled across something super special like nowhere else in the world.
I knew that the biggest waves in the world were going to be ridden there.
So me and Nicole came back the next year.
Last year, we came with no expectations.
Left with hopes and dreams, and those hopes and dreams are now going to be reality.
During the next two months, first is getting ready physically, mentally, spiritually to ride the biggest wave ever ridden.
So 2011 was our second year in Portugal.
We would make these blueprints all the time, like where we'd write our goals at the top.
And the only thing we would ever really write at the top is the hundred foot wave.
That's what you're going to be doing every day, playing in the whitewater.
In 2011, there was no doubts that Garrett was interested in coming back because he understood what he discovered here.
The only doubt was if he was coming more prepared with more guys and who was coming to help.
CJ, I trained him in Florida.
The surfing, he has down.
He'll do really, really well on the wave surfing.
Driving, he's going to need a lot of training.
How are you guys? - The waves are perfect.
- Right now? All the time.
Left and right.
I came last year and Garrett towed me into a couple of really good waves.
I got hooked.
It was a no-brainer to come back this year.
I plan on building a surfing career, starting from this, and I'm going to catch the wave of my life for sure in these next couple of months.
Just focus from here to there.
So that year, there was a lot of focus on Garret training CJ.
I'm feeling really confident with the ski.
It's just going to come down to, once it gets big.
In 2011, I really was planted here, waiting for the waves to come.
And then eventually the day came where the swell was picking up.
We drove out onto the lighthouse and looked out over the cliff and it wasn't big by today's standards, but by my standards, it was big and stormy.
Take CJ out into the water for the first time.
Test his skills and get his sea legs.
- So you ready? - Of course I'm ready.
I've been waiting for this moment for a long time.
I'm probably gonna catch the biggest wave I've ever caught today.
You are feeling pretty confident.
Yeah, confident.
Heart's pumping for sure, but it's good nerves.
I like it.
Now it's time to go make it happen.
Go catch some waves.
It was the biggest we had really surfed up until that point.
I just felt these nerves come up.
Once you decide to drop in and the thing goes to break, you're flying down the face and all of a sudden you're going way faster than you thought you'd be going.
It's like, oh my God, why am I on this thing? But there's no turning back.
We're just shot out of the rocket.
The only way through is forward.
Got a bunch of good waves and then at the end, got a good, solid pounding.
I came off on that one.
And then there was probably another six, seven waves behind it.
And I was just floored.
Whooped.
It was just the grinding, the grinding, the pounding.
That was tough.
CJ! We realized very quickly, we really need somebody on the cliff, like the eyes in the sky, basically.
Because the waves are so big, that they can't really see what's happening from the trough of the wave.
And if somebody goes down, you can't tell if it was left or right.
You're getting sucked up north or towards the south, towards the rocks.
So it started out as safety.
My job was only to say who fell, where they fell, which way where they were going and keep everybody safe.
When we go out surfing in Nazaré, Nicole's biggest role is to be up on the lighthouse with the walkie-talkie to radio to us.
She's really helpful in finding people, if someone wipes out.
If someone's in the impact zone, we know how to get to them.
And then they started to get really greedy.
So it's evolved into, you know, where's the set coming? Which one should I go for? How many are there? Tell me which one to go for.
You've got a big set outside.
Keep telling me where you see the best waves.
I can hear you perfect.
Garrett and the whole crew there in Nazaré really led the way in developing a lot of systems for big wave surfing.
And one of them is the use of spotters, which really has become very important in tow surfing.
It might seem like chaos.
We've got people barking orders, but it's a very choreographed dance that's taking place.
Nicole is the scale.
She is the intelligence within the madness surrounding big wave surfing.
And thank God that's there.
Because the adrenaline involved in big wave surfing is always like: "Go, go! Fast, fast, fast! More, more, more!" She's the other side of the scale.
Garrett is risk.
"Let's do it.
Fast!" Nicole is: "Let's think about it.
Let's see how it works.
" She's the balance that keeps things from breaking down.
Good lefts right here.
Let's practice putting me on some waves.
The first few times we went out with me towing him, it was kind of just madness.
Always sideways.
Never in, never out.
I found it pretty stressful to be just kinda tossed into that with Garrett.
Pretty much expected me to tow him in and put them on waves.
These rights you were putting me on right here? That's what you want? These rights you were putting me on? CJ tried to tow me on a few waves, but it seemed like he was afraid.
A couple moments of miscommunication with Garrett.
And a couple hairy rescues.
Go, go, go! Go that way.
That way! Hey, how's my head? Shit! You're okay.
A little blood.
A little bit of blood.
You're okay.
- I'm cut? - Little bit.
Nice! That's a lot of blood.
Right when you grabbed the board Yeah, I felt it hit you.
There's just miscommunication.
He didn't know what I wanted him to do.
And I'm pretty loud, and I'm going "over here, over there".
So it was a bit chaotic.
We weren't like that, it was like this.
We definitely need another driver.
I don't know why Garrett chose me and asked me to come with him that year and drive like that in a place that nobody had done it before, a spot where he should have like some seasoned veteran.
I think at that point, Garrett was pretty over big wave surf scene in general.
Once we discovered Nazaré, the surfing world discredited it and said it was a fat mushy mush burger that wasn't really a wave.
People at first wanted to dismiss it as even being a good, big wave.
It's stormy.
It's cold.
Like why would anyone want to go there? Nazaré, in the beginning, wasn't respected.
All of us thought that it was just like this random spot that does something that makes it look better than it is.
That wave's a pretty messy wave.
It's all crossed up and it's got a lot of stuff going on.
I put my career and my life on the line while everybody kept saying it wasn't a wave.
So that hurt a lot.
I can remember just hoping that Garrett would call.
I wanted to come back.
2010 was an introduction and realizing the potential.
And 2011 was just opportunity.
- We'll have fun, Andrew.
- Yeah.
We've got the second ski.
Look at these rights coming in.
- Are you ready for action? - Yeah, it's looking good.
I'm frothing.
Can't wait.
We called Cotty back cause I really loved his energy, his willingness to do whatever needed to be done whenever it needed to be done.
And we were a team, really good synergy.
When Cotty showed up, it was great because I'm getting to see how Garrett does it with some more experienced guys, how they like to drive.
Took a lot of pressure off of me.
We were all still learning how to drive a ski at Nazaré.
Garrett was basically training us.
He wanted it done right, and he wanted it done his way.
Sometimes he'd be shouting from the rope, like when you're towing it.
And that's kind of hard to keep your cool and sort of not react or focus on what you're doing.
Even when you rescued him, he'd be shouting at you.
You're scared, you're stressed.
And then you got Garrett's shouting at you to top it all off.
The toughest part about tow surfing is being dependent on a partner.
It is very similar to a marriage.
You have to deal with the personalities, the good, the bad and the ugly.
I'm a very fast track focus.
I know what I want, but I change very quickly as well.
So it's probably very hard for somebody to be my partner.
If Garrett could have towed himself, he would have.
And fortunately he couldn't.
So he needed me.
Nazaré is not only a place that requires the surfers to be world-class.
It requires the jet ski operators to be beyond world-class.
I mean, galactic class, I think.
It's easily the hardest place in the world to drive a jet ski because you have to keep going through the whitewater.
The jet ski was not designed to drive through this aerated foam.
So you'll often get a spot where you don't have traction, you're stuck in the mud.
It's like being stuck in the mud with an avalanche coming after you.
It's really the most dangerous place in the world to be in big wave surfing.
You have to have a lot of experience and confidence, but you also have to be ready for something to go wrong.
- How are you doing? - I got slammed so hard.
What happened? I saw you flying like crazy.
I landed on my face.
It felt like I was falling on concrete as well.
That hurt.
That was stupid.
I should have just fucking gone straight.
- Did you go too high? - Just to try to get off the back.
I should've just gone with it.
It would have been so easy to say I don't want it.
You have shockers some days where everything's going wrong.
And you want to give it all up.
There's a lot of times when you ask: "What the hell am I doing?" Like this isn't fun.
The plumbing job seems like it could be such an easier option.
I could just go back and do a normal job.
Well, he was always a little daredevil.
He wouldn't see any fear, really.
- Always in scrapes, shall we say.
- But a boy.
Proper boy.
His asthma stopped him from participating in running sports.
But we encouraged to swim because we were told that swimming was good for his condition.
My parents bought me a surfboard when I was like seven or eight.
Growing up in Devon, the people you saw most were the people at your local beach.
Croyde had a strong scene.
It was quite a good community.
The local guys, always a bit older.
They're the guys I sort of looked up to.
I wanted to be better than them.
The last stretch and this guy's about to take home the silverware in front of the home crowd.
At that point, surfing was just a hobby.
It was never thought to be a career path.
So I worked in the surf industry and just traveled a lot.
I worked to travel and surf.
I never thought I'm going to get to do this full time.
It was just, chase a swell, go back to work, chase another swell.
My dad tried to steer me away from it.
"When are you going to get a real job?" Which is why I did the plumbing.
That was my dad's thing.
"You've got to have a profession, a skill or trade," "and the surfing isn't it.
And it's never going to be.
" I think I might have forced him into being a plumber.
I don't know whether he resented me for that.
But he resented plumbing, there's no doubt about it.
I got into this rhythm where I was like working six days a week and I just felt myself going down this path.
I started looking into the future and I could see myself like sitting in the pub at like 50, 60 saying I could have done that, but I didn't.
I really didn't want to be that guy sitting there.
Kind of made me like sort of wake up a bit.
All right, don't be that guy that could have done something, but didn't.
When I got to Nazaré, things just gelled.
Everything just fell into place at the right time.
In late October 2011, a massive storm appeared on weather maps.
There's different weather sites that we look at.
And when a storm comes up, it's a blob on the map.
When the blob is red, it's going to be big.
Nazaré doesn't create those really good rideable waves every single day.
It's a really complex sort of calculation of the swell period, the swell angle, the height, the wind.
All these variables have to come together for these giant waves to show up.
Until 2011, we had never seen a red blob that big.
I was parked outside a fish factory on the west coast of Ireland.
My phone rang and it was an American number.
I immediately knew it was Garrett McNamara.
And he said Al, there's a really big swell coming.
I think this is the one.
Can you come down? When I got to Nazaré, there's an air of excitement, but there is definitely an air of what is coming because although we'd been out there and we'd surfed big waves, we felt that this was possibly going to be the biggest ever.
Everything's good.
Everything's ready.
We got Andrew Cotton, Al Mennie, CJ.
And we're going to get a giant wave.
I don't remember sleeping very well that night.
I was thinking about what's gonna happen tomorrow.
I remember lying there and I heard a noise.
I kept thinking what's that noise? And I was listening.
It was the surf breaking on the shore with such force it was making the door tremble.
Every now and again it would be Of all the nights I've been here, I've never experienced this before.
I really started to wonder, is this really going to happen tomorrow? Are we about to see the biggest surf ever in the history of surfing? Woke up early this morning.
Checked the buoys, checked the swell.
Looks really promising.
We're going to be riding the biggest waves we've ever seen.
Thierry Donard was there.
He makes those movies mainly about heli skiing.
And he had rented a helicopter because we thought it was going to be the biggest day ever.
I used to hear about this canyon a long time ago.
And Garrett told me the project had decided to come with him to do the shooting.
There's no point to surf the biggest wave in the world if nobody films it.
Amazing! Good to get a perspective of what's going on from up there.
The setup we had was absolutely avant garde.
The challenge is not only the way to surf.
The challenge is to get the right jet-ski, the right crew.
Guys, what are you thinking about the swell that is coming? Don't know what to say before a swell.
Don't want to jinx anything.
We're not surfers.
We're gladiators.
Nazaré to me seems to be unique.
And it's got the fear factor, that's for sure.
It's all exploration, we haven't done this before.
The biggest swell that I've seen, and we're just going to see where we can go, how far we can push it.
What stood out with Garrett those first few years was his mindset, his belief in like anything's possible, the fact the waves come to you and how you can manifest the moment with energy and visualization.
I don't get butterflies.
I don't get nervous.
I've surfed the waves so many times in my mind, just a matter of it coming.
I threw these figures around.
40 foot waves, 50 foot waves, 60 foot waves, hundred foot waves, right? That's very difficult to understand if you don't know anything about surfing.
The best way to think about it is if you're in an apartment block, look out the window.
That's the size of these waves.
It's like mother nature, isn't it? You can feel the energy.
It doesn't matter how strong you are or how well you can swim.
There's no amount of training that can prepare you for that.
We filmed all day and it was massive.
It was super fun.
We were catching beautiful waves.
Wave after wave, after wave.
You and your friends out in the middle of the ocean, riding these giant waves.
Just like a dream.
For me, it was a dream.
This place is amazing.
It's unique in the world.
I'd never seen a wave like this.
I couldn't believe this happened.
I was on the backup ski waiting patiently and they're surfing and they're doing their thing.
And then the moment comes, and Garrett's like, you ready to surf? So I get on the rope.
I see this massive thing rolling in from the ocean.
He puts me on it.
I ended up thankfully right in the sweet spot.
When you're in the sweet spot, you're dancing with danger.
One little mistake and you're too far back on the wave and it will swallow you.
And then going too fast and you're kind of out of the spot.
It was definitely the biggest wave that I've ridden and it was ridden well, ridden in the sweet spot, as best as I could.
That was amazing.
It lights me up to think about that.
Watching Garrett and CJ riding this wave.
What's it like from the cliff? When I get stuck in my head and I start thinking about things, I've got to make a point to like stop myself and really focus my thoughts on what I want to happen.
Not on other things.
Because it's two people that I love more than anything in the world, my brother and Garrett.
So seeing them do something together, something in the ocean and something they both love so much, it's incredible.
Then there's the other side of it too.
You're not there to conquer it.
You're there just to experience it briefly and get out of there.
It was pretty amazing.
No one conquers the ocean, it just doesn't happen.
You fly with it very briefly.
And if you're lucky, then it'll let you go.
It's probably one of the best feelings ever.
You learn a lot about yourself because you're putting yourself in positions and situations that you shouldn't necessarily be in.
At Nazaré in particular, there are waves that come through that sometimes you know you shouldn't go on, but your heart is telling you something else.
And often it's those waves which are the most rewarding.
But those waves are definitely the most dangerous.
At the end of the day, Al lost his board so Garrett had to go to the inside and pick him up.
Garrett came to rescue me.
And a wave stood up in front of us.
And this wave was coming.
When I thought I could make it And as he climbed the wave, he decided at the last minute we weren't going to make it.
And it just kind of caught us over the falls, upside down and backward.
I jumped off.
He bailed, but I didn't know this.
The ski goes up and I'm still holding on to it.
Then Then Cotty comes in, grabs me, takes me to the beach.
Cotton took Garrett in, put him on the beach, and came back and got me.
Then, Garrett and I were on the beach, and we've got local guys trying to help us get the ski out of the water.
Paulo and all those guys are down in there.
They want to rescue the ski because we need the ski.
Meanwhile, Cotton was out trying to go to the harbor.
But at some point he got knocked from the jet ski.
I just got washed off it.
Literally I couldn't hang on.
Garrett and I didn't know this.
We were standing on the beach.
All we could see was these huge waves breaking.
And so now he's out there on his own.
And the jet ski is literally going around and getting away from him.
And I was like, this is it.
I'm in the middle of it.
And I just grabbed the side of the sled and climbed upon.
And it was still running.
And I just made it out.
And if I'd lost it, that would've been the worst.
I was like miles from shore, stuck right in that middle.
Can't be complacent, gotta be focused.
When the waves are smaller, you can get away with slip ups, nobody dies and maybe a little hurt here and there.
But once we start playing with bigger and bigger Nazaré waves, those mistakes, you pay, you really pay.
Teamwork in Nazaré is so important.
Everyone needs to be sort of gelled.
Having one tow team and one rescue guy, even that isn't enough.
It doesn't matter how good we are on the ski.
You can still panic.
We cannot predict how everything will happen in the moment.
Something can go wrong.
Cotty, I wasn't gonna say anything, but I saw Al coming up and I just noticed that you picked Garrett before him and he might be pissed.
He was the first person I saw.
And I was going to stop and pick Al up.
But Garrett was like, just get him to the beach.
Hey Cotton! Heard you went to get Garrett before me.
I didn't see you, I couldn't see you.
I'm fucking green and orange! That's exactly what happened.
He left me, but he took the old man.
We get the ski off the beach.
We got a tractor in place, brought it back to the harbor.
And then I'm working on the ski all night cause I knew there was going to be waves the next day.
It was about to start.
And then it exploded and caught on fire.
The ski was totalled.
Garrett was beat up.
Then we just left it, went home.
I was defeated, I guess you could call it.
The next day was a pretty strange feeling day.
There was this kind of ominous feeling.
It was a kind of a heavy feeling of the day.
And the next morning, Garrett's like, I'm not even going surfing today.
I want nothing to do with it.
There was no plan.
We probably don't have conditions to do nothing.
So no stress.
Let's see what happens.
When we see the first light, we understand.
Hey, wait a minute.
This is perfection.
And it was a perfect morning.
On that day, the sea was like clean, beautiful blue.
It was like the perfect conditions.
Al Mennie and Cotty, they went to wake up Garrett.
I remember Cotton and I had to go to his hotel room to see Garrett and get Garrett.
Normally Garrett was there.
He was ready to go.
And this morning was slightly different from memory.
I was usually the guy who gets up super early and excited.
I was pretty exhausted.
And the boys came.
"Come on, It's bigger, it's better.
Let's go.
" "We can't go out without you.
" And I said, okay, I'll go.
But I'm just driving.
We're in the warehouse.
Everybody's suiting up.
And I remember walking up to everybody.
Look, I'll go out there with you guys, but we're going out there pure and simple for the love of it.
For fun.
Just to go have fun.
Surf for the right reasons, just to do what we want to do.
Not for anybody else, except for ourselves.
Not for this, not for that.
Just to go get waves and have fun and do what we want to do.
I was on the lighthouse with Paulo and Pitbull.
There was nobody at the lighthouse, it was like empty.
It was just us.
There's no other surfers there.
There's no other l film crew there.
It was just a magical day.
I think Al surfed first.
Al Mennie caught a couple waves, then he lost his board.
Cotty caught a couple waves, maybe even one wave and then lost his board.
So we're going back out and then they're: "Garrett, you go, you go.
" I really didn't feel like surfing and I'm like, no, I'm good.
I think it was me.
I think I actually said to him, come on, you may as well get a couple anyway.
Luckily I had my board out there just in case.
Cotty tried to tow me into one, but I didn't go.
Nothing really felt right.
And I'm just like, I'm not feeling it.
So I do my breathe up, resetting.
And I open my eyes and I reconnect.
Right after I did that, Nicole gets on the walkie-talkie.
Big set, big set.
Giant! Cotty pulls me up on the rope and then everything felt good.
I was on the rope like this new man.
And then I see this biggest wave I've seen.
Whole horizon.
And then Nicole says: "That was it! That's the biggest wave.
" "Come in, go to the harbor.
" Time to go to the harbor! Let's go make a baby! After the way it was ridden, they didn't surf more.
All of us that were there, we knew that something special had happened.
When we first arrived at the harbor, the look on their faces was evident.
Whatever just happened, it was obviously something out of this world.
And at the time I knew it.
I had the best view, obviously, because I was sitting right there.
And I could see the whole big slope of the wave.
He was just charging down it.
So focused, looking straight down the thing.
I just remember looking and going, oh my God, that is a beast.
Like I've seen big waves all around the world at that point.
And being there at that moment in time, I was in no doubt that this was the biggest wave ever ridden.
At some point I knew that I think I have something special in my camera and I was stressing.
Because people were asking me: "Can you show me?" No, I cannot show anybody now.
I need to go home, back up this file and then I can show everybody.
When I back up like three times, guys, let's enjoy, let's see the wave on the computer.
I remember standing in the apartment.
All the guys had all their laptops all around the table.
And seeing the image was incredible.
It's not until you see a photograph, a flattened image, a 2D image, where you're this big and the wave it was this big, where you can actually go, oh my goodness, that's massive.
It was substantially bigger than anything that day or that we had ever seen.
It was just insane.
There was no doubt that he knew it was the biggest wave ever surfed.
Everybody just felt a lot of accomplishment.
Like, we did it.
We knew that that wave was going to be enough to prove to the world that Nazaré was the biggest wave in the world.
Garrett rode the biggest wave.
There's absolutely no doubt about it.
And he should be the one that gets the credit for that.
However, there was multiple local men involved in making that happen.
In fact, I think the local men in Nazaré and the structure and the setup and the vision probably play more of a vital role in the surfers being able to surf at Nazaré than the surfers themselves too.
We are all outsiders.
There's an American, an Irishman, and an Englishman.
We're not local Portuguese people.
We don't own anything.
The Portuguese own that, and they should take ownership of it and they should be the proudest ones of it all.
It was definitely for me, one of the best days of the project.
We felt extremely proud.
We understood that was a special moment and we need to send this clip everywhere.
They sent it out to ESPN first.
ESPN got ahold of it and just blew it up, ran with it.
Garrett McNamara.
Down in Portugal, Garrett was towed into a rogue wave at the North Canyon.
And then the world ran with it.
Now here's something that you just have to see to believe.
While you were at work surfing the web yesterday, Garrett McNamara was surfing one of the biggest waves in the world.
The definition of risk-taking nerve, a surfer riding a moving mountain of water off of Portugal, smashing the record for the largest wave ever surfed.
- Look at him go.
- Unbelievable.
That blip right there on the top of the wave, that's extreme surfer Garrett McNamara.
Surfer Garrett McNamara.
Garrett McNamara claims that he has now served the biggest wave ever.
Was this a new record? Well, we won't know until the spring.
That's when they announce the official measurement.
It was a snowball effect of media, media.
That wave was like an endless mountain.
I could never get to the bottom.
It was wild.
We didn't sleep for three days because of all the interviews and the different time zones.
Half the people think I'm out of my mind.
I think they all think I'm crazy actually.
What we wanted to do with this story was to take the viewer as close as most people will ever get to a big wave.
There's a moment where I look back and you actually see this wave coming down.
Anderson Cooper became like a friend.
I will never forget his description of what it's like to ride a big wave.
You let go of the rope and you come down.
It's like riding the thing.
Sucks, it double sucks.
Down a building.
It's gonna barrel.
But the building's collapsing on top of you.
And then you just make it through.
So that was my impression of Garrett.
The news catching wind of it created a lot of excitement.
With that wave just has come so much exposure.
The largest and meanest waves in the world slam into a headland in Portugal called Nazaré.
That was the moment when all eyes came on Nazaré.
The doors blew open and everybody could see in and see these waves are the biggest in the world.
And there's the guys that are doing it.
There's no turning back at that point.
It just kind of went viral after that.
And then we put it into the XXL awards.
The idea behind the XXL Big Wave Awards was to elevate the status of big wave surfing.
Here's these guys riding 50 foot waves and what do they get? They get a little picture in Surfer Magazine and their buddies buy him a beer at the end of the day cause they rode the biggest wave of the day or maybe even the year.
So we proclaimed someone as being the champion that rode the biggest wave of the year.
And the winner is Garrett McNamara.
First I'd like to thank the town of Nazaré in Portugal.
That is my family and the people are just so amazing there.
It's the best kept secret in Europe, in the world for that matter.
Biggest waves I've ever seen.
And I'd really like to thank Nicole, my love over there.
Thank you for everything, Nicole.
We have a nail-biting new world record to tell you about.
A new Guinness world record for 44-year-old Garrett McNamara.
His ride just officially becoming one for the record books.
The folks at the Guinness book have certified the wave is 78 feet tall.
Ruling that McNamara holds the title for the largest wave ever surfed.
That is the key moment to all of this.
Until then, nobody on the other side of the world would believe that Nazaré would have the biggest waves in the world.
Nobody would believe in us.
And from that point on, when that wave started to appear everywhere, nobody could ignore Nazaré.
The place is called the Nazaré Canyon.
That is just unbelievable.
The wave came and Garrett rode it and I knew it was really, really big.
I was really hoping it was like, about 10 to 15 feet bigger.
The real job would have been done, but now we still are waiting for one out there.
Is there a little bit of envy about not catching that wave? No.
I drove Garrett into a world record wave.
I couldn't have been more stoked.
Are you kidding me? Having that opportunity to do that, that is a career highlight.
I think that's the quite unique thing about big wave surfing, it's not always going to be you surfing it.
You're in the team.
Garrett was towing me 10 minutes before that world record wave.
If he wouldn't have seen the wave and towed me, he would have done exactly the same.
Sometimes it does seem unfair that it's just the surfer that gets the recognition.
But I never at any point was like jealous or bitter.
I was like quite the opposite.
Garrett had the objective to be the one to ride the biggest wave.
And that's what happened.
And I almost felt like it was meant to be in this strange way.
But you can never predict who will be the one that gets it.
Some days when there's multiple massive waves ridden, it's almost unfair to say, such and such rode the biggest one when everybody else also rode equally gigantic waves, that might've been a foot bigger or a foot smaller.
But on this day, Garrett's wave, without a doubt, was the biggest of the day.
He was the one in the place at the time.
Cotty spun right onto the wave, put Garrett right in the center of it.
And he looked like he was in the perfect spot at the perfect time.
Couldn't have been better.
It was perfect.
- Say perfect one more time.
- Perfect! You and Al were tow partners for quite a few years, weren't you? Yeah, we had a good few years together.
The reason Cotton and I have got so far with it and feel so confidently with it is because we've always been together.
And a lot of the guys out there, maybe they haven't got a solid partner, they change partners a lot.
Cotton and I have always been together.
It's made us a good team.
It's made us strong.
Whenever Garrett and I came off the ski the other day, I knew he was coming in somewhere.
I knew in my mind, that whatever he could do, he would get to me.
And you don't have that trust in everybody.
And you need to have that belief and bond with somebody.
At the time, it felt like you and Cotty were a unit.
Was there a reason that you stopped working together? I can't comment on his reasons and his actions and what decisions he took with his surfing career.
For me, I wanted to return to Ireland and focus on my own projects.
He clearly wanted to focus on something else.
That's up to him.
I've gone back to Nazaré a few times, but it's definitely not my focal point.
There's far more to life than focusing on one big wave spot in the world.
In my personal opinion.
We did like two seasons down in Portugal.
And then he wanted to spend more time sort of just in Ireland.
Al had a business and work commitments.
I didn't have a business.
I knew I didn't want to be a plumber.
I just saw it as an opportunity.
It was now or never.
To have that opportunity to surf with Garrett and tow him and be taught by him, I wasn't going to pass it up.
When Garrett broke the world record, I knew at that point in my surfing career that I wasn't ready.
I couldn't have surfed that wave like Garrett surfed it.
Wouldn't have surfed it like he surfed it.
But now I could surf that wave how I want to surf it.
I'm more ready now.
At some point, I want to have that ride.
I want to get that wave of my life.
I'll be devastated if I don't get an opportunity to have that moment, to have that wave.
There will be the day when you put it all on the line.
When the day comes, it's just being ready.