Nazaré is now well and truly on the world surf map, with this year’s monster waves attracting the sport’s most intrepid. On Sunday, Briton’s Andrew Cotton won the day – and it looks like he may well have broken his own record.
Photographer Bruno Aleixo, who snapped Cotton’s last 80-foot (25-metre) feat in October, told reporters that Sunday’s wave – steaming in with Atlantic storm Bridget – “may well have been bigger”.
Footage was live-streamed round the world and the audience is thought to have exceeded the 300,000 registered in October.
But the man who put Nazaré on the map – Cotton’s tow partner Garrett McNamara, who in January 2013 surfed the mother-of-all-waves in Nazaré, thought to have been almost 30 metres high – was keeping a low profile, and repeating his praise, as ever, for the conditions at Nazaré.
The Hawaiian surfer has always said the beach would be a great place to stage big-wave competitions. “If the Portuguese people want a competition here, I will do what they want,” the veteran told SIC notícias.
Meantime, the decision on whether Andrew Cotton’s feat at the weekend goes into the record books rests with Billabong XXL judges who will make their announcement in March.
