MAMA NAZARE IS PUMPING
A big wave experience for the record books
This was truly one of the more ridiculous things I’ve ever done. I do not recommend it, unless you have a very strong lower back and a fetish for fear.
In spring 2025, I was in Lisbon, Portugal, watching an HBO show called 100 Foot Wave. I watched Garret McNamara discover a secret spot—Praia Norte in Nazare, Portugal—where, a few times per winter, the waves grow monstrous, 50 to 100 feet.
Garret figured out how to surf these swells using jet skis to get towed in and rescued. Now Nazaré is the most famous big-wave surfing location in the world. And the site of countless injuries and one fatality.
Naturally, I decided I must go there.
Six months later, and I’m back in Portugal. Waiting patiently in Porto, checking the forecast for incoming swells. The app says, December 3-6: HUGE.
I rented a car and a B&B near the famous lighthouse, the prime location for big wave watching.
I pulled into the old beach town and descended upon the lighthouse like a kid running down the stairs on Christmas morning.
It looked exactly like the TV show.
Monster rollers were coming in and crashing into the cliff. A band was playing on the roof of the lighthouse.
I looked at the waves.
This is it? I’m just going to stand here and watch for three days?
No way.
I needed to get in the water.
I’m not a person who lives life on the sidelines. When I see an arena, I like to get in it.
I opened my old friend Google Maps and searched: Big wave jet skiing.
That’s how I met Freddy Olander — a German, pro big wave surfer, who, as a side hustle, takes idiots like me out on the back of his WaveRunner, a modified jet ski that goes up to 100 mph, to outrun 100-foot waves.
I had no intention of going swimming on this trip, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.
Steve Jobs once said, “Have the courage to follow your heart, even when it leads you into the 50-70 foot waves with Freddy from the internet.”
The Big Show
The next morning, I rolled out of bed and went straight to the lighthouse. Hundreds of spectators lined the cliff watching the Boeing 747-sized waves assault the cliff. Dozens of jet ski pilots attempted to get a handful of mentally ill surfers onto said waves, and then rescue them afterwards, before they get completely murdered by the following set of waves.
I find a spot on the cliff — where people’s legs are dangling off (this place is not big on safety features).
Soon enough, there’s a flipped jet ski and multiple people thrashing around in the white water get pushed toward the cliffs — where they will surely be shredded by the force of Mama Nazare pounding their bodies into prehistoric jagged rocks.
Rescue teams swarm the zone, trying to reach them without also getting flipped.
Eventually, everyone gets saved, and the wrecked jet ski is dragged across the beach by a tractor.
I look at my phone, it’s Freddy, “Can you come now?”
I put my hands on my face.
“Okay”
I run back to the car and drive to the port of Nazare.
I pull in, and it’s like a sketchy port from The Sopranos. I find a small warehouse with a nice wooden table and a MacBook on it.
Five minutes later, Freddy arrives. He’s a shredded German with a big smile and he embraces me like we’re old friends.
He tosses me a wetsuit, pulls a hardcore life preserver over my head, and next thing I know, we are speed walking across the dock. I’m jogging to keep with my vest on that’s so tight I can hardly breathe.
We look at the jet ski. “Okay hold here and hold here, and stand a little, or your lower back will be in a lot of pain tomorrow,” he laughs.
We start motoring through the marina. A tan man on a jet ski is arriving back from his excursion.
“It’s beeeg,” the man says with wide eyes. “HUGE.”
“You can see them from here,” says Freddy.
We are over a mile away.
I see a MOUNTAIN RANGE of waves on the horizon.
I immediately knew this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
The skyline is eerily similar to the White Mountains in my home state of New Hampshire. The difference is these mountains are mobile.
The breaking peaks, snow-capped summits.
Before we’re even out of the harbor, the waves are ten feet over my head.
Training
“What happens if we don’t work as a team?” says Freddy.
“I don’t know”
“We flip the jet ski.”
“Okay”
“You’ve ridden a motorbike?”
“Yeah”
“What do you do when you ride a motorbike?”
“Uh”
“When you turn…”
“Lean”
“Yes, I need you to lean, but not too much, or we flip.”
“Okay”
“Let’s practice now.”
He whips us around doing S-turns and a doughnut with the radius of a penny.
I lock in like I’m in a James Bond film.
“Okay, you’re leaning well,” he says.
Freddy’s jet ski piloting performance gives me confidence we’ll be fine in the mountains of the sea. But my nervous system remains unconvinced that this is a safe situation.
He brings the ski to a stop, and we bob in the rollers.
In big wave surfing, every jet ski tows a ‘safety sled’ for the surfer to climb onto when they get picked up after surfing a wave.
“See those orange ropes on the sled,” says Freddy, “Throw them in the water.”
I throw the two thick ropes into the ocean to drag behind us.
“Those are the Last Chance ropes,” he explains. “If you miss the sled, your last chance is to grab one of the ropes.”
“Okay”
“Okay, now get in the water.”
I look at him blankly.
“We are going to practice a rescue.”
I gingerly slip into the ocean.
He throttles the ski, and I get blasted in the face with water.
I flail around, adjusting to the buoyancy of my Iraq-grade life preserver.
He comes screaming in on the ski and does 180, and I grab a Last Chance rope and pull myself to the sled, where I grab two handles, and he takes off again.
He slows down. “Don’t hold so high on the sled because when I slow down, you will come forward and hit your head on the back of the ski.”
I almost said: Can I get a helmet?
So I shimmy down the sled a bit, leaving my bare feet dragging in December’s North Atlantic.
“If we are in between waves and there is no time, then you need to grab my arm as I drive by, and I will swing you onto the sled.”
“Okay”
“Okay let’s practice that now.”
I slip back in the water.
He drives by, and we nail it first try.
“Good,” he says. “Let’s do it again, but faster.”
He swings me onto the sled again and then jetskis like a madman, like he’s trying to throw me off. I hang as we go up and down rollers; my field of view totally blocked by the back of the jet ski.
When he’s done, I climb onto the back of the ski, pat him on the shoulder, and say: “Let’s never do that again.”
My training is complete.
For half a mile, we climb and descend twenty-foot rollers en route to the fifty-footers that are being pumped out from the depths of the underwater Nazare Canyon.
100 Foot Wave
Freddy explains that ‘Peaks’ are locations where the largest waves emerge.
“There are three peaks,” he tells me, “Peak 1, Peak 2, and Peak 3.”
We summit a roller and get eyes on the horizon.
“Looks like Peak 1 is the biggest today… Oh man,” he says, “It’s huge. We’re going into Peak 1 now.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
My knuckles are snow. I’m clutching a strap on the back of this jet ski behind this guy I met fifteen minutes ago, heading into the biggest waves in the world.
He turns and tightens the strap I’m holding on to.
“If this comes loose, let me know.”
“Okay”
Small tsunamis are occurring in front of us. We’re heading into the mixer like the police are chasing us.
Am I ready to die?
A former girlfriend flashes in my mind’s eye.
No. Not like this.
A million years of evolution buried deep in my cells is telling me I’m in over my head - literally these waves are way over my head.
[I wasn’t thinking about filming or photographing during our incessant ventures into the song of tsunamis. I was just trying to hold on and not pee my wetsuit.]
The sun beats down, warming the air that is vibrating with white noise decorated in thunderous rumbles—deep exhales from the Atlantic.
Walls of water look like they are going to break on our heads but they don’t. Somehow Freddy knows they won’t. Once we get eyes on the next set, Freddy positions us so we don’t get crushed by an aquatic avalanche.
There are jet skis everywhere I look. Some with surfers holding tow ropes. Most are here to help with rescues.
Freddy throttles hard to evade a monster wave. Positioning is everything.
“How much are these things? Like $100k?” I say, referring to the machine.
“No, when we are done with them, only like $25-30k.”
I’m fascinated by the organization and the logistics, and the art of the positioning. I keep asking him questions. He responds in perfect English with his German accent and every now and then abruptly stops talking and throttles the ski to get us into a non-fatal position.
“Wow,” I say, “How big do you think is, like 50 feet?”
“50 feet, easily.”
“Are any of the big names here today?”
“Everybody is here,” he says.
“Is Tony here?”
“He’s in Spain.”
“The French lady?” (from the show)
“Justine yeah, I saw Justine”
“McNamara?”
“No. Garret is getting older, so that’s why.”
“He’s like 60.”
“Still charging though.”
A beautiful Brazilian is bobbing in the water, surfboard strapped to her feet, holding a tow rope, waiting for the 100-foot wave.
I smile. “I know who that is,” I get Freddy’s attention. “That’s Michelle, from the show.” 1
To my surprise, Freddy drives right up to them and begins a conversation with Michelle and her driver.
Her driver goes on a rant, “There was a huge wave - perfectly glassy - this other guy cut us off and we let him have it, then he crashed on the wave!
We waited for two hours for that!”
I’m thinking, how could you be out here and complain. On second thought, they are here to perform. Not just take pictures. And two hours is a long time in the North Atlantic in December
I wave a shaka sign. Michelle squints at me like Who the hell is this guy? Then I realize the blazing sun is at our backs, and she can hardly see me.
We speed by the cliff and the lighthouse. Hundreds of onlookers are watching.
I shake my head. People are not going to believe this.
I request that Freddy give me his phone so I can photograph to at least prove I really did this.
“There’s Sebastian,” he points to a man in a black and yellow wetsuit holding onto a tow rope.
Sebastian Steudtner is one of Freddy’s German compatriots. He holds the world record for the largest wave ever surfed—86 feet.
Freddy’s eyes are always watching the water.
“There’s a big one coming,” he says. “It’s just building up now.”
Sebastian’s driver accelerates and places him on the wave. The monster wave passes in front of us with Sebastian surfing it.
“You’re gonna love these photos,” I tell Freddy. “I’m gonna sell these to you.” He laughs.
It felt like we were in the waves for hours, but it was actually more like 45 minutes.
En route back to the marina, Freddy wanted to give me one last thrill: “We’ll go fast now.”
“No, it’s all good,“ I said, to preserve the remaining cartilage in my lower back.
Aftermath
Quite the way to start the day.
Back at the warehouse/office at the marina, Freddy says, “Did you have fun?”
I balk.
“It was boring. Terrible time.”
He laughs the laugh of someone who has been playing around in Nazare for eight years.
He starts running around the warehouse like an animal in heat. Like his wife is going into labor and he needs to get to the hospital, but really it’s just that Mama Nazare is pumping, and he wants a piece of the action.
“I need to go to work now,” I say.
“Really?”
“Yeah I need to get on a Zoom call with an investor.”
“I need to go work too,” he says, and holds up his board.
Outside the building, a wet Portuguese man in a wetsuit comes up to us. It’s one of Freddy’s surfing buddies.
“How is it??” Freddy says, eager for me to fuck off so he can go surfing.
“No one is out anymore,” the man says, shaking his head.
“Really??”
“Big drama going on. Someone’s in the hospital. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”
I get in my rental car and put my hands on my face, which is caked in salt.
I’m so happy I’m alive.
I say a prayer for the guy in the hospital, Carlos Burle, and for everyone else as well.
Our Father in Heaven
Hallowed be thy waves
They kingdom come, thy surfing be done
On Earth, as it is in Nazare
Give us this day, our daily swell
Forgive us our wipeouts, as we forgive those who steal our waves
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us into awe
Photos
The following four photos are of the same wave with Sebastian Steudtner surfing it. As of writing, he holds the world record for largest wave ever surfed.
Freddy said afterward, “Next time we can go in the zones for proper shooting”.
If you’re ever in Nazare, you might consider Freddy’s Big Wave Experience.
Song
I’m really into worship music right now. I Surrender by Hillsong has been my go-to this winter.
Alternative to Health Insurance I Use
Everyone wants to get out of health insurance system without feeling stupid or taking a big risk. I’ve been using CrowdHealth since 2022. It’s a better service at a better price than anything else I can find. If you’d like to join, use code BIGWIN (affiliate).
Book
All Outcomes Are Acceptable is probably like nothing you’ve ever read before. Bestselling author Paul Millerd texted me, “This is a work of art” and “I want this to spread”. Insight and entertainment is guaranteed. I even did a trip to Pennsylvania to live with Amish people.
Epilogue
Back at the lighthouse, I watch the handful of skis left in the meat grinder. My lower back clenches just looking at them.
It’s mute but the waves. Everyone mutually mesmerized by Mama Nazare.
On the beach.
I’m nowhere near the water, but a beach custodian waves me away from it just in case a monster comes up and tries to take me home. Five minutes later, where I was standing has a foot of water over it.
Even the beach is dangerous.
There’s a giant hole, and if you fall in at high tide, there’s no way you get out without going swimming, in which case you’ll get swept out to sea, then die.
At the crack of dawn, it’s low tide and I find myself in the hole.
As Steve Jobs said, Have the courage to follow your heart, even when it leads you into a hole in Portugal.
One thing I’m fairly certain of: If I live another decade, I’ll find myself back in Nazare filming a hero surf the 100 foot wave.
You can just do things.
Five months earlier I was sick for weeks with a severe set of infections and nervous system dysfunction. It was effort to watch a television show. I put everything I had into watching 100 Foot Wave. Sitting on the floor of the kitchen, too tired to go back up the stairs, I thought, Maybe someday I’ll get to go to Nazare and film and photograph. Wouldn’t that be amazing. Maybe I could do that someday.
And I fucking did.
Basically as soon as I was healthy enough (really I wasn’t) I full sent it.
You can do cool things too.
Reflecting on the venture, much of it was not that intense because we were mostly bobbing around in safe zones, not cutting it close at all, relative to what the surfers were doing.
Part of me was scared the entire time we were near the large waves, but I really enjoyed it. It was fascinating, beautiful, and awesome.
Thanks for reading this edition of All Outcomes Are Acceptable. For more stories delivered to your inbox for free, just add your email to the list (only pay if you want to).
Notes and Other
Sebastian’s 86-foot world record wave:
This video provides a good perspective of what it’s like to be out there bobbing around:
The Brazilians have amazing surfers. Michelle’s compatriot, Maya Gabeira, was also in the show, 100 Foot Wave. She got crushed by a wave, lost consciousness, technically died, and was revived on the beach. Two years later, Maya surfed a record 76-footer, and they made a documentary called Maya and the Wave.
Oh my God, this is incredible! So awesome you did this. Respect man, this is life goal stuff. Great pics too. Glad you’re feeling better too.
I love not only the story, but also you’re style of writing!