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NAZARE, Portugal — A surfer who claims to have ridden a wave 100 feet high says the ride did not give him the adrenaline rush you might think.
Garrett McNamara, 45, claims he broke his previous world record by surfing a nearly 100-foot wave in Portugal earlier this week. A photo released Tuesday, Jan. 29 by the Nazare Qualifica organization shows McNamara riding a giant wave atop the Nazare Canyon, a 1,000-foot deep underwater canyon off the coast of Portugal.
The Hawaiian surfer currently holds a record for surfing a 78-foot wave on the same waters in November 2011. The official decision as to whether or not McNamara broke his previous record will be released in the spring.
The surfer told Anderson Cooper, however, that the wave did not give him the rush one might anticipate.
"It was just this endless drop and my feet were popping out of the straps," McNamara told CNN. "It was really difficult, one of the longest, hardest drops I've ever dealt with."
In an interview with ABC, McNamara described the experience.
"You're just going so fast and it's really, really similar to snowboarding down a giant mountain," McNamara said. "You're just chattering and you're just flying down this bumpy, bumpy mountain. Your brain is getting rattled your whole body is getting rattled."
McNamara said he kept his eyes on the 300-foot cliffs along the coast as he rode the wave out.
"I was really focused on everything that was going on and the whole time I was looking straight at the cliffs," he told CNN.
"I can honestly say survival chances were very, very slim," he said in the ABC interview.
McNamara was born in Pittsfield, Mass., but at age 11 moved to Hawaii's North Shore with his family.
