I can’t think of anything else to add, yet.
In the days of Greg ‘Da Bull’ Noll, you’d paddle like hell to match the speed of the wave as much as possible and slide down the face of the wave, as the water in the face of the wave rushed up at you.
Big waves nowadays use a tow-in system, such that you stand on the board and are pulled by a jetski or helicopter to get up to speed. You drop the towline at the appropriate spot, and have sufficient speed to drop down the face of the wave. If you weren’t going fast enough, you would tend to go up the face and over the lip, like the water is doing, or like a cork would do.
Practically, then, the limits of big wave surfing may turn out to be ‘how fast can I be safely towed’, as well as ‘how fast can I drop down the face - faster than the face is coming up?’ and ‘how far can I afford to fall down the face’, and ‘If I get driven to the bottom, can I get back to the surface?’
I’m no big wave surfer, but as an average surfer I can tell you, these would quickly become serious considerations. I remember wiping out on a big day, and being driven to the bottom, and thinking - as I swam up - about how I hoped the packet of water that I was swimming in was not going downward as I clawed my way upward.
Well, the biggest wave ever recorded measured over 1700 feet, so there’s that. I suppose theoretically that an experienced surfer could surf it, but I doubt that he/she would survive to tell about it.
Two boats surfed the wave and the occupants survived. :eek: It’s a shame none of them had a surfboard.
In the doc film Riding Giants (which is an amazingly entertaining film, BTW), it was stated that the maximum size for “paddle in” surfing (where the surfer paddles their own board) was 25-35 ft. After that, and you can’t get moving fast enough to catch the wave. For larger waves, they go to “tow in” surfing, where a small boat or jet ski tows them like a water skier and lets them get moving fast enough to catch the big waves, with “big” being 60-70 footers at the beach called Jaws.
It sounds like the limit is how fast the surfer can get moving prior to catching the wave, and 60-70 feet is getting close to upper limit for non-tsunami waves, so the limit might be that any higher waves would require storms of such strength that tow-ins wouldn’t be possible.
Are you telling me that Patrick Swayze could never have surfed the point break? That he died for naught??:eek: