Original subtitles

[TV static drones]

[bright tone]

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- Aha!

- That's what you want to run away from.

♪ ♪

- 2007, we're doing some documentaries

with Deep Water Films.

We've got Ryan Casey. He said, "I got this idea."

So he emails me a video,

and as this glacier calves off...

- Oh, shit!

- It creates this perfect wave.

- How big was what we just saw?

- It came from the top, so it was about 300 feet high.

And the chunks that were flying across the river were

probably the size of the vans here.

- We went up there and scouted.

It looked totally doable.

Get in the water the first day and...

Overwhelming, terrifying fear

just consumed me.

I visualized myself on the bottom of the riverbed,

squashed under this massive piece of ice.

It just was so overwhelming that I threw in the towel.

I said, "We're out of here."

- I don't know what's wrong with my partner.

I don't know. I think he's scared.

He's got a little scariness in his eyes.

- Called my wife, and I'm crying on the phone.

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

'cause it's really dangerous.

And I love you guys.

And then my partner Keali'i, who's usually the guy

who's real cautious,

he goes, "Ah, don't worry. We're gonna 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.

- Oh, oh, oh, shit! Holy shit!

Holy shit!

Holy shit!

God damn!

♪ ♪

- It was spooky.

But we made it.

♪ ♪

- Oh-- - I got it!

♪ ♪

- We were there for seven days

riding waves and having fun.

Yeah, 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 100-foot wave,

I'll get the rush again."

And so I quickly got on that mission

to try and find and ride the 100-foot wave.

[soft music]

♪ ♪

- Check out these monster 100-foot waves

off of Portugal.

- The biggest wave ever surfed,

as high as 100 feet.

- To put that in 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 heights.

- What happens here happens nowhere else in the world.

- Biggest wave ever surfed. - The biggest wave ever--

- Will be the biggest wave-- - The biggest wave--

- The 100-foot wave.

♪ ♪

- Measuring big waves is complex, yet simple.

What you've gotta understand is,

measuring a wave is very different

from measuring a mountain.

That mountain's not gonna move.

You can go back and measure it today.

You can measure it tomorrow. You can measure it 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

'cause 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 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 3-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,

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.

[ominous music]

- 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 gonna be ridden there.

So me and Nicole came back the next year.

Last year, we came with no expectations...

Wow!

Left with hopes and dreams.

And those hopes and dreams are now gonna be reality.

During the next two months, first is getting ready

physically, mentally, spiritually

to ride the biggest wave ever ridden.

[indistinct chatter]

- 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 100-foot wave."

- That's what you're gonna be doing every day,

playing in the white water inside.

- 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 waves surfing.

Driving, he's gonna need a lot of training.

No way. - 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 really good waves,

and 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 gonna catch the wave of my life for sure

in these next couple months.

- Just focus from here to there.

- Burrow out the middle a little bit more?

- So that year, there was a lot of focus

on Garrett training CJ.

- I'm feeling really confident with the ski.

It's just gonna come down to once it gets big, you know?

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.

Then 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.

- Whoo!

- 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.

- What are you gonna do out there?

- I've been waiting for this moment for a long time.

[soft dramatic music]

I'm probably gonna catch

the biggest wave I've ever caught today.

- [laughs] You are feeling pretty confident?

- Uh, yeah, confident, nervous.

Heart's pumping for sure, but it's good.

Good nerves. I like it.

Now it's time to go make it happen,

go catch some waves.

- Yee-haw!

- It was the biggest we had really surfed

up until that point.

I just felt these nerves come up, like--

[laughs nervously]

♪ ♪

Once you decide to drop in and the thing goes to break

and 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--

[mimics water rushing]

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 and we're going.

The only way through is forward.

♪ ♪

Got a bunch of good waves, and then at the end,

got a good, solid pounding.

I get off from 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--that was tough.

- Oh!

CJ! 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 when they're

in the trough of the wave, they can't really see

what's happening, and if somebody goes down,

you can't tell if it was left or right.

You're getting sucked up north.

Sometimes you're getting sucked 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 they were going,

where they were, 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, 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 is the set coming?

Which one should I go for? How many are there?"

- Tell me which one to go for!

- You got a big fat outside!

- Oh, just 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 where you've got people

barking these orders,

but it's a very choregraphed dance that's taking place.

- Straight in from where you are!

Go, go, go, go, go! Fast, fast, fast!

More, more, more, more!

- No way.

[soft music]

- Come down, sit right here.

- The first few times we went out

with me towing him,

it was kind of just madness.

- Bashing against the waves.

Always gotta go sideways!

Always sideways! Never in, never out!

- I found it pretty stressful

to be just kind of tossed into that

with Garrett pretty much expecting me

to, you know, tow him in and put him 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.

He put me in a couple waves,

but it seemed like he was afraid.

- Couple moments of miscommunication with Garrett.

- [indistinct yelling]

- And a couple hairy rescues.

- Go, go, go, go, go, go, go! That way, that way!

- Yeah, I felt it. I felt it hit you.

- It was just miscommunication.

He didn't know what I wanted him to do,

and I'm pretty loud.

"Over here, over there!"

So it was a little bit chaotic.

It just wasn't-- we weren't like that.

It was like, you know, it was so...

- 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.

And that wave's a pretty messy wave.

You know, 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 remember just hoping that Garrett would call.

I wanted to come back.

2010 was an introduction and realizing potential,

and 2011 was just opportunity.

- We'll have fun, Andrew. - Yeah.

- We got the second ski. We're all good.

Look at these rights coming in.

- A good right selection.

- Yeah, that's looking good.

- I'm frothing. Can't wait.

[laughs] - Cool.

- Couldn't turn...

I 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.

It took a lot of pressure off me.

- At that point, we were all still learning

how to drive a ski at Nazaré.

Garrett was basically training us.

- Yo, it plugs in!

- He wanted it done right, you know,

and he wanted it done his way.

Sometimes he'd be shouting from the rope,

like, when you're towing him.

- [indistinct shouting]

- 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.

- Hey! Tell him to--

- You're scared. You're stressing.

And then you've got Garrett 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.

Hey!

I'm a very fast-track, focused, know what I want,

but I change very quickly as well.

So it's probably very hard for somebody

to be my partner.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Go again.

- 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 white water.

A jet ski was not designed to drive

through this aerated foam.

So you'll often get a spot where you don't have traction

and you end up 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.

- [gasps]

- How you doing? - I got slammed so hard.

- What happened after-- I saw you flying like crazy.

- I landed on my face. It was like, doosh!

I don't know how the hell that was.

Bonkers. Falling on concrete as well.

Like, you know. That hurt.

That was stupid.

I should have just fucking gone straight.

- 'Cause it's too high?

- Just thought I'd get off the back.

I didn't want to be, like--

but I should've just gone with it.

- It was crazy.

- It would have been so easy to, like,

"I don't want it."

You have shockers some days where it's just like

everything's going wrong and, you know,

you just want to give it all up.

There's a lot of times you question, like,

what the hell am I doing?

Like, this isn't fun.

The plumbing job seems like,

"Oh, that could be such an easier option, you know?

Like, guess I'll just go back and just do a normal job."

- Oh, he was always a little daredevil.

He'd have a go, yeah.

He wouldn't see any fear really.

Always in scrapes, should we say, but--

- But a boy, a proper boy. - Proper little boy, yeah.

- His asthma stopped him from participating

in running sports.

But we encouraged him to swim 'cause 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,

sort of the people at your local beach, you know?

Croyde had a strong sea.

It was quite a good community.

The local guys, you know, they were always a bit older.

They were the guys that I sort of looked up to.

You know, I just didn't want to be as good,

I wanted to be better than them, you know?

[energetic music]

♪ ♪

- Last stretch and this guy's about to take home

the silver win in front of a home crowd.

♪ ♪

- At that point, surfing, it was just a hobby.

It was never thought to be a career path.

So I sort of, like, worked in the surf industry

and just traveled a lot, you know,

worked to travel and surf.

I never thought at any point

I'm gonna get to do this full-time.

It was just, chase the swell, go back to work,

chase another swell.

My dad tried to steer me away from it.

"Are you gonna get a real job?" sort of scenario,

which is why I did the plumbing.

That was my dad's thing.

It was like, you've gotta have a profession.

You know, a skill, a trade.

And the surfing isn't it, you know,

and it's never gonna 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 found myself going down this path.

I was, like, looking into the future,

and I could see myself, like, sitting in the pub

at, like, 50, 60, saying,

"Oh, I could've done that, but I didn't."

You know, "I could've."

And I really didn't want to be that guy sitting there.

Kind of made me, like, sort of wake up a bit, you know?

Like, okay, all right, don't be that guy

that could've done something but didn't.

When I got to Nazaré,

things just gelled, didn't they?

Everything just fell into place at the right time.

- 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, you know it's gonna 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 variable have to come together

for these giant waves to show up.

- The swell in 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,

and 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 was an air of excitement,

but there was definitely an air of, what is coming?

'Cause although we had been out there

and we'd surfed big waves,

we felt that this was possibly gonna be the biggest ever.

- Everything's good. Everything's ready.

We got Andrew Cotton,

Al Mennie, CJ,

and we're gonna get a giant wave.

- I don't remember sleeping very well that night,

thinking about what's gonna happen tomorrow.

I remember lying there, and I heard a noise,

and I kept thinking, what's that noise?

And I was listening and listening.

It was the surf breaking on the shore with such force,

it was making the door tremble.

Every now and again, there'd be the chh, chh.

[door rattling]

Of all the nights I've been here,

I've never experienced this before.

I really started to wonder,

is this really gonna happen tomorrow?

We're about to see the biggest surf ever

in the history of surfing.

[thunder crashes]

- Woke up early this morning, checked the buoys,

checked the swell.

It looks really promising.

We're gonna 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 gonna be the biggest day ever.

- I used to hear about this canyon long time ago,

and when Garrett told me the project,

I decided to come with him to do the shooting.

Is no point to surfing the biggest wave in the world

if nobody film.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- Amazing.

Good to get a perspective of what's going on from up there.

- The setup we have 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.

So, guys, what are you thinking

about the swell that is coming?

- What to say before a swell, you know?

Don't want to jinx nothing.

- We're not surfers. We're gladiators.

Nazaré, the wave 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 gonna see where can go,

how far we can push it.

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- My stand-out memories of Garrett these past years

was his mindset,

belief in, like, anything's possible,

that the waves come to you,

how you can manifest a moment with energy and visualization.

- I don't get butterflies. I don't get nervous.

I've surfed the wave so many times in my mind,

just a matter of it coming.

- I threw these figures around, you know, 40-foot waves,

50-foot waves, 60-foot waves, 100-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 were in a tower block or an apartment block,

maybe you're in your apartment watching this on TV right now,

look out the window.

That's the size of these waves.

That's the sort of size we're talking about.

- Just, like, Mother Nature, isn't it?

You can feel the energy.

It doesn't matter how strong you are, you know,

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,

and it was super fun.

And we were catching these beautiful waves,

wave after wave after wave.

You and your friends out in the middle of the ocean

just riding these giant waves,

just... [mimics wave crashing]

It's like a dream.

- For me it was a dream. This place, it's amazing.

It's unique in the world.

I never seen a wave like this.

I mean, 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.

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, being right in the sweet spot.

[dramatic music]

When you're in the sweet spot, you're dancing with danger,

you know, 'cause one little mistake,

and you're too far back on the wave,

and it'll swallow you.

And then going too fast,

and you're kind of out of the spot.

[whooping]

That was definitely the biggest wave

that I've ridden, and it was ridden well,

you know, ridden in the sweet spot

as best as I could.

That was amazing.

♪ ♪

That lights me up to think about that.

- When I get stuck in my head

and I start thinking about things,

I've gotta make a point to, like, stop myself

and really focus my thoughts on what I want to happen,

not on other things,

'cause it's two people that I love more than anything

in the world, you know, 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 then get out, you know?

And that's, like-- it's pretty amazing.

No one conquers the ocean.

It just doesn't happen.

Flow with it very briefly,

and if you're lucky, then it'll let you go.

[unintelligible]

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 into 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, and I thought I could make it.

- And as he climbed the wave, he decided at the last minute

we weren't gonna 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.

And the ski goes up, and I'm still holding onto it.

- Then-- [mimics crash]

And then Cotty comes in and grabs me,

takes me to the beach.

- Cotton took Garrett in, put him on the beach,

came back, and got me.

Then Garrett and I are 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 skis. We need the ski.

Meanwhile, Cotton is out trying to get back out

and go to the harbor, but at some point,

he got knocked from the jet ski.

- As I was coming out, 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.

We didn't know he'd lost the ski.

All we could see was these huge waves breaking.

So now he's out there on his own,

and the jet ski's literally going around

and getting away from him.

- And I was like, this is it.

In the middle of it,

and I just grabbed the side of the sled

and climbed up on, and it was still running.

I just made it out.

If I'd lost it, then I would've been in the worst--

I was, like, miles from shore, not out the back,

just, like, right in that middle bit.

♪ ♪

- Can't be complacent. Gotta be focused.

When the waves are smaller, you can get away with slip-ups

and, you know, nobody dies and maybe a little hurt

here and there.

But once we start playing with bigger

and bigger Nazaré waves,

you know, 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 Cotton is on the ski,

how good I am on the ski.

You can still panic.

You cannot predict how everything will happen

in the moment.

Something could go wrong.

- Cotty, I wasn't gonna say anything,

but, like, I saw Al coming up, and I just noticed

that, like, you picked Garrett before him.

He might be pissed. - [laughs]

No, listen, he was the first person I saw.

I don't--that's-- [laughs]

And I was gonna stop and pick Al up,

but Garrett was like, "Just get me to the beach."

- Yeah. [laughter]

I didn't see you. I couldn't see you.

[laughter]

That's exactly what happened. He left me.

But he took the old man, took him in.

[laughs]

- We get the ski off the beach.

We had a tractor in place, brought it back to the harbor,

and I'm working on the ski all night

'cause I knew there was gonna be waves the next day.

It was about to start,

and then it exploded and caught on fire.

- Yeah, the ski was totaled, and Garrett was beat up.

- Then we just left it, went home.

And 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 kind of a heavy feeling of the day.

- The next morning, Garrett's like,

"I'm not even going surfing today.

I want nothing to do with it."

- There was no plan.

It was like, 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 condition.

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, and I was pretty exhausted.

And the boys came, "Come on, Garrett.

"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.

I'll drive you guys."

We're in the warehouse. Everybody's suiting up.

And I remember walking up to everybody.

I go, "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.

- Yeah.

♪ ♪

- I was on the lighthouse with Paulo and Pitbull.

There was nobody at the lighthouse.

It was, like, empty. It was just us.

- There was no other surfers there.

There was no other, like, film crew there.

It was just--I don't know, like, a real magical day,

you know?

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 they're like,

"Garrett, you go, you go."

I really didn't feel like surfing.

I went, "Nah, 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,

and I'm like, "Eh."

I didn't go.

Nothing really felt right, and I'm just like,

"I'm not feeling it."

So I do my breathe up.

[breathing deeply]

Resetting.

And I open my eyes.

And I reconnect.

[upbeat music]

And right after I did that,

Nicole gets on the walkie-talkie.

- Oh, a big set. Big set!

Ooh.

[indistinct radio chatter]

- 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.

[heart beating]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Yeah! Whoo-hoo! - Whoo!

Whoo!

♪ ♪

- [laughs]

Huge one!

[laughter and cheering]

- And then Nicole goes, "That was it!

That's the biggest wave! Come in. Go to the harbor."

- Whoo-hoo! - Time to go to the harbor!

Let's go make a baby!

[soft music]

♪ ♪

- Whee-hee!

- Whoo!

- After the wave 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.

What had 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 in front of it.

And I could see the whole big slope of the wave.

He was just charging down it, so focused,

looking straight down the thing.

And I just remember looking and going,

"Oh, my God. That is a beast."

Like, I had seen big waves all around the world at that point.

I had been all over the world surfing big waves,

and being there at that moment in time,

I was in no doubt that this was the biggest wave ever ridden.

- I remember standing in the apartment.

All the guys who were in the media side of it

had all their laptops all around the table,

and seeing the image was incredible.

It's not until you see a photograph--

it's a flattened image, it's a 2D image

where you're this big and the wave's 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.

We 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 gonna be enough

to prove to the world that Nazaré was the biggest wave

in the world.

- Of course 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 played more

of a vital role in the surfers being able to surf

at Nazaré than the surfers themselves do.

We're all outsiders.

Like, 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. [laughs]

[cheers and applause]

- We understood that was a special moment.

And we need to send this clip everywhere.

- They sent it out to ESPN first.

- The Association of Surfing Professionals--

- ESPN got a hold 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.

- Garrett McNamara.

- Garrett McNamara claims that he has now surfed

the biggest wave ever.

- Was this a new record?

Well, we won't know until the spring.

That's when they announce the official measurements.

- It was a snowball effect of media, media.

That wave was just like an endless mountain.

Just kept--could never get to the bottom.

- It was wild.

We didn't sleep for three days because of all the interviews

in the different time zones.

[laughs]

- 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.

- [as Garrett] It's like riding a thing...

- Sucks. It double sucks.

- Down a building...

- It's gonna barrel. It's gonna barrel.

- But the building's collapsing on top of you.

- [mimics crashing]

- And then you just make it through.

- Rah!

- 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.

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 was 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 them a beer at the end of the day

'cause they rode the biggest wave of the day

or maybe even the year.

So we proclaim someone as being the champion

that rode the biggest wave of the year.

- And the winner is...

both: Garrett McNamara!

[cheers and applause]

[sweeping orchestral music]

♪ ♪

- First, I would 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.

[cheers and applause]

♪ ♪

- 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.

- Place is called the Nazaré Canyon.

That is just unbelievable.

- The wave came, 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.

- Um...no.

I drove Garrett into the world record wave.

Couldn't have been more stoked.

Do you know what I mean? Like, you kidding me?

Having that opportunity to do that?

Like, that is a career highlight.

I think that's the quite unique thing

about big wave surfing is that it's not always gonna be

you surfing it-- you and the team.

Garrett was towing me ten minutes

before that world record wave.

He wouldn't have seen the wave and not towed me.

He would have done exactly the same.

Sometimes it does seem unfair that it's just the surfer

that gets the recognition, you know?

But I never at any point was like...

like, jealous or bitter.

I was, like, quite the opposite, you know?

- Garrett had the objective to be the one

to ride the biggest wave, and that's what happened.

And it almost felt like it was meant to be

in a 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,

"Oh, such and such rode the biggest one,"

whenever everybody else also rode equally gigantic waves

that might have been a foot bigger or a foot smaller.

But on this day, Garrett's wave, without doubt,

was the biggest of the day.

He was the one in the place at the time.

Cotty spun around onto the wave

and put Garrett right onto the center of it,

and he looked like he was in the perfect spot

at the perfect time.

Everything was sort of perfect.

Couldn't have been better. It's perfect.

- Say perfect one more time.

- Perfect! - [laughs]

- Yeah, we had a good...

good few years together.

- The reason Cotty and I have got so far with it

and feel so confident with it

is because we've always been together.

And a lot of other guys out there,

maybe they haven't got a solid partner they work with.

They change partners a lot or wherever they go

get a different partner.

Cotty and I have always been together.

It's made us a good team. It's made us strong.

Like, I knew whenever-- Garrett and I come off the ski

the other day, and the ski washed up on the beach,

I knew he was coming in somewhere.

I just 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 in situations like that.

- At the time, it felt like, you know,

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, 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.

You know, I didn't have a business.

I knew that I didn't want to be plumbing.

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 gonna pass that up.

You know, there's no way.

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'd surfed it.

But now I could surf that wave how I want to surf it.

And 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, you know, 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.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[bright tone]