Garrett McNamara

📍Nazaré, Portugal

“Garrett McNamara was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in August 1967, and grew up partly in California before his family moved to Hawaii when he was eleven, where he and his brother, Liam, learned to surf on the North Shore of Oahu. He became a professional surfer, and then one of the boldest big-wave and tow-in surfers in the world, riding giant waves around the globe. In 2010 he was invited by the town hall of Nazaré, an old fishing town on Portugal's Atlantic coast, to explore its waves as part of a three-year project. Nazaré is a place of whitewashed houses, fishermen's wives in traditional skirts and a clifftop fort with a lighthouse, and beneath Praia do Norte, the north beach, lies the Nazaré Canyon, an enormous underwater canyon about 170 kilometres long and up to five kilometres deep, which focuses Atlantic swells into gigantic waves. Few people surfed there, and many locals thought the waves were impossible. McNamara and his team studied the canyon and the winter swells, and made Nazaré their base. In November 2011 he was towed into a wave at Praia do Norte measured at seventy-eight feet, a world record for the largest wave ever surfed, and Nazaré became famous around the world, drawing big-wave surfers and tens of thousands of visitors each winter. He settled in Portugal, made Nazaré his second home, and his story was told in the series 100 Foot Wave. Nazaré has honoured him for transforming the town.”

Sources: edition.cnn.com npr.org surfertoday.com Wikipedia: Garrett McNamara