We’ve seen some bone-crushing waves at Nazaré in Portugal over the years (As seen here and here). This week we saw a mammoth wave that some are calling the “biggest wave of the season.”
Photographer Pedro Miranda explains the frightening death wave:
“The session was really intense. The conditions were a bit messy, with onshore winds and the swell coming a bit more North, instead of the predicted Northwest. The wave formation wasn’t perfect, with a lot of mutant waves, making that lineup even more weird and unpredictable than usual. It was gnarly and potentially lethal. You had that strange feeling that someone could get seriously hurt or worse, at any moment… It was high tension til’ everybody was out of the water.”
Videographer Kylian Castell captured the gigantic wall of water and turned it even more hair-raising by filming the waves in black and white in a video he titled “Nazaré – Black Carnival.”
Francisco Porcella braved the enormous waves and tamed the beast. Porcella’s “bomb heard ’round the world” is the early leader for Ride of the Year.
But not everyone was able to handle Nazaré this week as Pedro “Scooby” Vianna suffered a head injury on Wednesday. After getting crushed by a monster wave he needed two staples on the inside of his head and 15 stitches to the outside.