Nazaré. Even without the now famous 30m waves, the name has a mystical ring to it. Close your eyes, say “Nazaré” and, if you know anything about surfing, you'll instantly picture roaring white froth, rolling towards the craggy brow of Portugal's ancient Praia do Norte cliffs that jut out over the Atlantic like a lonely tooth, capped with the red roof of the Farol de Nazaré lighthouse. Gnarled, wind-flayed and crusted with salt and spectators, those cliffs have taken the continual pounding of the winter waves for millenia.
Now, these veritable tsunamis bring the long-lens camera crews to town in their thousands to record one of the world's latest and greatest spectacles: a speck of a man on a board the size of a coin, going at speeds of up to 80km, almost vertically down a ten-storey wall of water. It’s death-defying theatre at its most photogenic — surfing not as a sport, but as a debate with gravity. The men and women who ride these waves inspire expressions like bravado, daring and whatever Portuguese word best translates to “wowzas”. They're men like Portugal's Nic von Rupp and Frenchman Clement Roseyro, who won this year's TUDOR Nazaré Big Wave Challenge. I spent a few days with them in Nazaré learning about big wave surfing — the remarkable team work of surfer and jet ski that makes the feat possible — and getting some surf and jet ski lessons from the pros themselves.
Back home in South Africa it's surfing season. The 56th Ballito Pro, held annually in KZN, has just ended and the J-Bay Surf Festival, which takes place in our most renowned site of surfing exploits, Jeffrey's Bay, is about to begin (running from July 11 to 20). Located in the Eastern Cape, J-Bay's Supertubes break is one of the most famous right-hand point breaks in the world. Long, fast and mechanically perfect on its best days, it demands a combination of flow, precision and courage. But Nazaré, and what Von Rupp and Roseyro are able to achieve on those Portuguese waves, is something altogether different.
The Ballito Pro and the J-Bay Surf Festival feature surfing as we know it — the palm fronded, mellow, ukulele and lei paddle-in kind. Surfers rely on their own strength and stamina, timing their paddle to match the speed of an approaching wave, and then pop up to ride it. Tow-in surfing, on the other hand, emerged as a revolutionary technique for conquering colossal, fast-moving waves that are nearly impossible to catch by paddling alone. Here, a jet ski tows the surfer into the wave at speed, allowing them to match and ride waves that would outrun a paddler. It's fast, it's hectic, it's extreme and it requires pitch-perfect teamwork.
Von Rupp and Roseyro are the new masters of the jet ski/tow-in and release one-two routine, a team so aligned that the rope between them is like an umbilical cord. When Roseyro won the Men's Best Performance Award in just his second TUDOR Nazaré Big Wave Challenge appearance with an individual score of 21.83 out of 30, he credited Von Rupp, who'd towed him into the winning position for his achievement.
“I’m grateful to Nic,” said Roseyro from the podium. “We’re a really good team. He taught me a lot — how to drive the jet ski, how to read the surf, how to feel it. We push each other to perform.” Von Rupp responded, reflecting on managing near-record 30m waves: “This was only possible because of the team. The connection I felt with the ocean and Clement that day was so strong. We trained. We earned this. We bled for it.”
When I spoke to von Rupp and Roseyro at the press junket organised by their sponsor, Tudor watches, a few months after their win, I knew little about Nazaré besides the “hugest wave in the world” hype. I'd seen the amazing pictures flooding social media and had watched some of the Emmy Award-winning, Netflix documentary 100 Foot Wave about veteran surfer Garrett McNamara’s obsession with conquering a 100‑feet of saline swell at the little fishing village in Portugal — a quest ignited by local bodyboarder, Dino Casimiro's cliffside snapshot of his hometown waterworks. Casimero invited McNamara, the big wave hero, to suss out the geological anomaly that, in winter months, surged at his doorstep. In 2011, McNamara surfed at Nazaré what was then the largest wave ever ridden, an estimated 78-foot (24m) behemoth.
Historically, big wave surfing has always flirted with danger. Hawaii's Kaena Point, Mavericks in California, Ireland's Mullaghmore — each site is nature's challenge to those who are dilly enough to test the water. But as the Tudor watch slogan goes, these kinds of guys were “born to dare”. For Garrett especially, who'd spent years looking for a 100-foot wave, none had the geological favour that Nazaré enjoys. Beneath these towering waves a vast and ancient underwater chasm stretches 230km out to sea and plunges to depths of over 5,000m. It's the unseen engine of the world’s most spectacular surf. Unlike most coastal shelves, which gently slope and break the momentum of the water, the Nazaré Canyon acts like a funnel. Storm-driven energy from the deep Atlantic is drawn into its gaping maw and accelerated, preserving the full force of the swell as it charges towards the rocky shore.
Where the canyon meets the shallows — abruptly and with dramatic contour — it catapults the energy upward, detonating the ocean into these walls of water. The collision of topography and tide creates what physicists call constructive interference: multiple wave trains overlapping and combining, compounding their power rather than dispersing it. The result is not just big waves, but steep, fast, thick-lipped mountains of moving sea. Where most waves have movement; Nazaré’s have weight. Without this submerged Grand Canyon and McNamara, insane enough to try tame its spitballs, Nazaré would still be just quaint fishing village with a great beach.
He may have been the first to surf one of the world's biggest waves here, but McNamara didn't create Nazaré; he baptised it. And since then, names have piled on: Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca, Maya Gabeira, who holds the world record for the largest wave surfed by a woman, Justine Dupont, known for pushing the limits in big wave surfing, and now Von Rupp and Roseyro, who are taking things up a notch along with their big wave sponsor, Tudor. Together they won the Best Team Performance award, and Roseyro took home the Best Male Performance.
Von Rupp is passionate about big wave surfing, but he's equally passionate about ocean conservation. He's also determined that future generations of surf star wannabes will learn from him and develop the sport. He's the face of Mountains of the Sea, a surf collective and movement created to train, support and ultimately evolve big wave surfing. “We draw inspiration from the America's Cup and from Formula 1,” he says. “We believe the future of surfing is in team structure with sponsorships.” His tandem win with Roseyro confirmed that team work prevailed. “We trained harder than anyone. We surfed more swells, studied more footage, fell harder and got back up quicker.”
He adds, “Mountains of the Sea isn't just about riding record breakers. It's about grooming the next generation. We've got a 13-year-old kid training to ride the biggest wave in the world ... and he'll do it.” Now they're expanding their orbit. “We've been to Iceland, scouting new spots in -10°C. We're planning to find surf in Greenland. The ocean has more secrets to share with us.” And, like all true explorers, home base is of utmost importance: a soon-to-be-opened team HQ in Nazaré. “It's our equivalent of the F1 paddock. A place to wait out the cold, watch the swells and prepare.”
The format for The Tudor Nazaré Challenge is simple: nine teams of two, six heats. Each team alternates between surfing and towing, a choreography of jet skis and adrenaline that, of course, relies on the manifestation of those crazy waves, which can be any time between November and March, so the teams have to be ready to drop everything to race to the water. Time is of the essence, especially when there are waves to catch. “It’s all about timing,” says Von Rupp. “You’ve got a few seconds — less, even — to catch the swell, to make the drop, to avoid being chewed and spat into froth.”
Von Rupp and Roseyro wear time like an anchor. Behind the athleticism, the training, the teamwork, the technology and the fans is an unspoken reality: big wave surfing exists at this scale because of sponsors like Tudor. They're the oxygen of the sport, taking care of the surfboards, jet skis, wet suits and everything else these elite surfers and the team behind them need. Tudor has stitched their name to these gods of the surf, but the big water of Nazaré, and the men who try tame it, ultimately tell the tale.
Running from 11–20 July, the J-Bay Surf Festival will feature the likes of:
- Grammy Award-winner Zakes Bantwini;
- Italian techno artist TribalNeed;
- Comedy stars Rob van Vuuren & KG Mokgadi.
Alongside the entertainment line-up, the World Surf League Championship Tour returns to the legendary Supertubes for nearly two weeks of world-class surfing action. Click here for more info
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