I knew what was coming was, but how big it was, no. then I realized: twenty meters, the highest I had ever ridden, 105 miles from San Diego. I was shivering. It was an absolutely magical thing – but one that can kill you
It’s as if you were looking down from a skyscraper. You see a very high wall, full of bumps. In the air you hear a kind of buzz, as you move very fast trying to get on the right side of the wave. All your focus is on that. It takes you about seven or eight seconds, when on a normal wave it usually takes one. Then you start descending, along seven floors of the wall, while running as if in front of a huge canal.
It was her, the big wave, the first one I rode at Cortes Bank, a coral reef 105 miles from San Diego. It was completely perfect, with the winds of Santa Ana, an absolutely magical thing: it was January 19th from 2019, the kind of day that happens once every ten years. We left by boat at five in the afternoon, to arrive there at five in the morning. Completely in the middle of nowhere.
The boat seemed to have gone mad. I could hear the birds up in the sky, the sun was rising. It was so different from any other experience, as if I were surfing on the moon. I saw the ocean completely flat, calm, and then all of a sudden 60-foot waves rushing to crash over the reef. It was a bit like being on a runway with a 747 landing near you: an atrocious noise and your body shaking all over.
We did a tow-in, which is when you are pulled to the crest of the wave by a jet ski attached to nine meters of rope. The wave very fast so to catch them you have to move at 40kph. I jumped into the water, slipped my feet into the straps and at that point I realized what I had to do. I knew what was coming was a giant wave, but not how big it was. Three meters is a lot for an average surfer. But this was over twenty. We caught the wave, and once I reached the top I knew it was the biggest I have ever ridden.
I remember feeling her breathing on my back. I knew that very easily I could be blown away, that the edge of the wave could hit my head, and that’s where the wave caught me, as the chills rolled down my neck. Meanwhile I was thinking: you are on top of the biggest wave of your life, you cannot afford to make mistakes. Because something like that can even kill you. Three of my closest friends died like this. And I came close.
