Wow.
Wouldn't that standard deviation of +/- 1.11m tip it over the 100ft mark?

What a wuss going right, I reckon a quick foam climb on the left would have looked sick. Sure imminent death, but would have made kook slams for sure.

100 foot. Sounds so good but looks so lame.

Looks like lucas may have broken the record.

Excellent analysis and lateral comparisons Stu; thankyou.

Height is one measurement, all kudos to these dudes/duette's but for me, accepting the limitations from my safe internet vision perspective, Peahi is the place that has and will continue to take big wave surfing to the next level. Am I right in saying 2005/2006 remains the swell to beat at this location?

Gotta be a 20ftr tops, should have to go top to bottomish at least, not sold :/
Not that I want a bar of it

Can that be classed as a ride, really? He hardly made it a third of the way down the face. It's a farken huge wave, sure, but a little in-and-out-again shoulder hop shouldn't go into the record books, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Mike Parson's Cortes poster sits proudly on my beer fridge. Shits on anything Ive seen from the Naz quality wise.

Jeez that was lame, he was on the shoulder by the time it broke

It may be big at the peak but it was a very lame ride. I'm in the park you have to get to the bottom to claim the height of a wave. Lets call it the height that you ride - on an 80' wave the rider might only drop 40,' so a 40' wave ride.

Meh, go surf low tide Frontón.

Hard to judge a wave of this magnitude. The surfers are freaking nuts as the consequence of any type of wipe out in a wave this size is severe.
But i have to say, I don't rate judging a 100 foot wave from the peak too the trough, if the wave never actually breaks all the way to the bottom of the wave. I could personally watch Jaws all day, but quickly tire watching Nazare

Interesting the point they choose as the base of the wave. In that still image it looks fair enough, but the video shows that the surfer goes nowhere near it, but not only that, the whitewash doesn't reach the 'base' either.

Bit fishy.

Maybe there's a formula for determining wave height ridden by measuring the size of the surfer's balls.....

Expressed mathematically, the difference between how this ride felt for Vini and the amount I give a fuck must be approaching infinity.

The video just doesn’t inspire awe the way jaws/mavs/chopes/cloudbreak etc at maxing size does though. The wave looks crazy then goes to mush. No doubt the tallest waves ever surfed will happen at Nazare, but they will always have an asterix next to them. The paddling and backdooring barrels at jaws is just next forefront of big wave surfing currently. (My opinion counts for sweet FA, but there it is).

It's not 97 feet top to bottom,but trough to crest it might be.
Which means it's not necessarily the biggest wave in the world like they say it is these days.
To get a top to bottom measurement you'd have to draw it about 100 feet in front of the wave to get an accurate idea, unlike most of the other big wave places.
What it definitely is is the thickest wave in the world with the most water volume in it.
To my eyes surfing this place has more in common with a snowboarder riding down a mountain with an avalanche chasing them rather than traditional big wave surfing.

Whatever happened to Cortes Bank? I always thought that would be the place a legitamate 100foot wave with a wall would be ridden.
Seems to have fallen off the radar.

As a sheer spectacle the wave is amazing. Nothing of the footage from the past few yrs has me excited when comparing to jaws as a big wave riding spot though.

"Big waves are measured in increments of fear"

Was it Kerbox or Hamilton who said that?

100 foot, maybe close. Nazare, blah blah blah blah blah. I suppose they're surfers on waves. But they're shit. It's just so shit.

Present day-
“I rode a big wave, can someone please verify that for me?”

Definitely was 95.5 foot wave. A very boring one at that. I hope surfers are still watching Cortez. That looks more interesting.

Its almost as big as my dick!

Peahi is the real deal though. This is just, an interference pattern.

But who the hell am I to have any say in this?

That contest at Jaws where they were paddling into 50 footers and one dude got barrelled is the epitome of big wave surfing

Jaws, Cortes and even Mavs trumps Nazare for big wave surfing imo not that its worth anything. But Nazare is consistently the largest but a lot of the rides can be rather boring. Not that I would have the balls to even attempt it. FWIW, Mason Barnes ride at Nazare in the same session was a way better ride on a wave I reckon as large. He went left and top to bottom and it was an incredible ride.

The peak might be technically 97' vertically but on my screen the white water as it breaks measures 15cm and the surfer 1cm making it about 75'. Waves viewed from up higher always appear bigger as the base slopes so far that the trough is irrelevant to the surfer. Then again what we call a 6' wave is about double overhead so I'm buggered if I know. That's my 2 cents worth.

Consider for a moment the BIG wave surfers entirely absent from any notable Nazare session since the place has been a thing. I had a bit to do with one of the aforementioned a few years ago. He wouldn't lower himself to be seen there, referring to the break as a "fat mush-burger piece of shit."

No doubt, though, Nazare is a freakish natural phenomenon, an awe inspiring visual spectacle, and about ten times-ish bigger than the biggest wave I've ever surfed. 'Surfed' being the keyword.

In closing, there are places like Cortez, but are almost impossible to get to. Then there's the timing even if you had the logistical wherewithal. A legit 100ft wave - with a proper wall - will break, be surfed and recorded, sooner or later. I know it, sure as I know the day will break tomorrow.

Greg long incident was after the ghost wave book, Give the author C. Dixon a break.
The reason is because it rarely happens not because they are ignoring cortes bank. When it breaks clean again there will be a swarm out there i promise you!

Ok Stunet, RadiationRules and Bluediamond. Here's the account of Greg's near drowning I wrote for the Epilogue in the 2016 paperback edition of Ghost Wave. If y'all enjoy it, support my family and buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wave-Story-Biggest-Challenged/dp/1452155852

EPILOGUE
December 20, 2012
When the second wave hit, Greg Long knew he was in trouble. After an eternity of climbing his leash, he breached the ocean’s surface only to be pile-driven fifty feet below the top of the whitewater—the wave deflating his lungs and nearly knocking him out. “Okay,” he told himself, “this just got really scary.”

A half minute earlier, Greg had been on top of the world. He’d set up this December 20, 2012 trek to Cortes Bank aboard Mr. Terrible with Twiggy, Mark Healey, Shane Dorian, and Ian Walsh. Mavericks veteran Frank Quirarte, John Walla, and Ian’s brother DK—a standout rescuer at Jaws, led the safety effort. Aboard the nearby Electra, Garrett McNamara stood by with another team of recruited surfers. Late on this gloomy afternoon, Greg sat atop Larry’s Bowl gaping at the biggest Cortes swell since 2008. He’d already wiped out twice—his first, a spectacular ass-over-elbows drubbing, but he surfaced smiling and ready for more.

“I knew this was going to be a monumental trip,” Greg said. “A day we would be riding waves like we’d never experienced before.”

And he was right. Moments earlier, Greg’s friend, a young father named Shawn Dollar, had somehow swallowed enough fear to paddle way, way out past everyone to meet a set that looked suicidal. Dollar had set a 55-foot world record at Mavericks in 2010. But towering over the middle peak, the warbling, choppy colossus Dollar now faced was of a different realm. Dollar whipped around and paddled. Long muttered, “Best of luck dude.”

Dollar’s otherworldly wave would be judged 61 feet high—a new paddle world record.

The swell was coming on strong. When the next set’s first icy wall loomed, Greg, Shane Dorian, Ian Walsh, and Mark Healey sat in a tight cluster. Healey lined up the first wave. “This wave was a bomb,” Healey said of his looming executioner, “a bucking bronco. And there were four more bombs behind it.”

Greg paddled for the next wave. “You only have the fastest moment to make this decision,” he said. “Okay, I can catch it. Put my head down and commit.”

Long crouched deep through his bumpy drop and charged for the exit. “But then I see somebody in front of me,” he said. “It’s Garrett.”

McNamara had been sitting 30 yards farther up the shoulder, in a position that should have made catching the wave impossible. But Garrett had a secret weapon—a battery-powered, surfboard called a Wavejet. Via a radio button on his wrist, McNamara’s ten-footer instantly summoned twenty pounds of thrust, good for nine or ten miles an hour over the four or five his arms could muster. He easily cleared the ledge. Aiming straight down, back to the whitewater, he had no idea Long was desperately angling right for him.

“I end up catching him, and we go straight together and then the whitewater just overtakes us,” Long said. “The power and speed of these waves. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced paddling. When the wave hit, it hit me solid, square. Pushed me real deep.”

Tumbling in darkness, McNamara and Long both pulled their ripcords. McNamara’s suit inflated and he ballooned to the surface. Long’s didn’t deploy. “I said to myself, okay, you’ve dealt with these wipeouts for fifteen years. Relax.”

Twiggy airdropped into the very next wave—the biggest, most difficult peak he had ever sketched into; a wave so cartoonish, it could have been drawn by Rick Griffin.
Unsure whether another wave lurked behind the one that destroyed him, Long gambled on swimming up for a breath. “Eight full strokes,” he said. “Double-arm breast strokes. I’m getting closer and closer. I swim, up, up, up, and I’m right there.”
From the vantage of his massive wave, Twiggy watched Greg’s head break the surface, right in the bull’s-eye of the lip. “I remember thinking, oh man, that guy is in deep, deep trouble,” he said.

“Before I can get a breath, Twiggy’s wave hits,” said Greg. “Hit me so hard. The breath that was in me was taken away.”

Greg had already been buried in that frigid water for a half-minute. Now he was in the maelstrom again, nearly knocked out, with vise-like pressure squeezing his head, his lungs completely deflated. “Your body goes through these natural reactions,” Greg said. “Stomach and chest contractions. Telling me . . . get to the surface to breathe.” Countless breath-holding sessions gave Long a good idea where he was in the drowning process. This was the first wave of excruciating convulsions. “Overcome it, and you can last longer than you think,” he said. “But breathing—it’s the most primal instinct you have. You have to relax, convince yourself you’re going to be fine. Those feelings will subside— a bit. But they will come back, stronger and harder than ever.”

The turbulence waned. Then the fourth wave detonated. Greg had not inhaled for well over a minute. He marveled that he could still think. Somehow the thumb-thick leash was still tethered to his surfboard. He began climbing it. “. . . pulling myself through this hellish whitewater rapid inch by inch,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m feeling everything that I know happens before you pass out: tingling in your feet and hands, your body going through full spasms. You’re telling yourself, hang in there, you’re almost there. I remember getting to the tail section of my board. I know I’m right there at the surface. I take one last, big stroke, and that was all I had in me. I blacked out. I drowned.”

After the black out, Greg remembers only a universe of warmth and light. He doesn’t recall John Walla roaring into the impact zone, only to be forced out by the fifth wave bearing down. He has no recollection of DK Walsh following the next wave in, spotting Greg face-down, leaping off his ski and bear-hugging him just before the sixth wave buried them both.

Greg didn’t see Rusty, horror-stricken by his brother’s face; purple-black from lack of oxygen. He didn’t feel DK heaving him onto the rescue sled, blowing in his face to encourage an autonomic last breath that most drowned people unfortunately take underwater, and screaming, “Greg, Greg, wake up! Please wake up!”

When that dying breath came, Greg had no idea he spewed out gobs of blood, water, and foamy surfactant from the exploded capillaries in his lungs. He was still on a euphoric plane, at the ragged edge of this mortal coil.

It wasn’t until he was dumped on the boat, three minutes later that life roared back in with a smothering vengeance. “Full spasms, vomiting blood and foam, the most horrendous sensation,” he said. “Every time I went to take a breath, it was this gurbling, bubbling, wretching feeling, like I was still suffocating. It was horrifying.”
He flashes to the Coast Guard airlifting him into the inky darkness amidst the heaviest seas they’d ever attempted a rescue. “Those moments,” he said choking back tears, “were some of the saddest of, of my life. Just this over- whelming sense of guilt and selfishness. It made me question my life’s pursuit entirely. This is everything you loved and dreamed of, and you fucking end up in a basket in the middle of the ocean? Seeing my best friends and my brother and their concern for me . . . not in a million years would I ever want to put anybody through that. Thinking of my parents, getting a broken satellite phone call . . . Basically, Greg drowned, we brought him back, he’s being airlifted out by the Coast Guard. Imagine how that is for a parent. It was one of those real moments of reflecting on your entire life, and everything that’s brought you to this point, and what was it you were after? And in the end. Is it worth it?”

Greg Long’s dead reckoning with the Bishop Rock happened just over a year after the first edition of this book was published. Greg knows better than anyone how an infatuation with true wilderness is bound to be one-sided. That wilder- ness can turn on you savagely and remorselessly.

Of all the people in the world, I thought Greg Long had the most personal love affair with the Cortes Bank, but after Ghost Wave was published, a few other tales—and human beings—added to the Bank’s lore. When Carol Foland Snell picked up this book in 2013, her jaw dropped. There, on the back cover was the sinking ship her father, Hermann Foland, had sold to Joe Kirkwood. Captain Foland was the last whaler in California. He’d bought Jalisco intending to turn her into an offshore whaling station, but after years and hundreds of thousands of dollars outfitting her while watching the whaling industry decline, he reluctantly sold her in 1966—with stern advice for Kirkwood and his partners. “Dad had warned them repeatedly against exchanging the anchors,” she would tell me. “A dire warning they callously shrugged off. Your story tells the rest.”

Patrick Sullivan is an engineer for Boeing, but on November 2, 1985 he was stationed at the aft end of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise alongside the landing officer who waves off planes if they’re making a bad approach. Late that afternoon, there was just enough daylight to clearly see Enterprise plow into the Bishop Rock. The 1,123-foot ship “was pushed sideways,” he said, comparing the hit to the doomed cruise liner Costa Concordia. “It was literally sickening.”

But even more alarming, Sullivan clearly saw something—the Bishop Rock, or maybe the wreck of the Jalisco—exposed, three feet above the ocean’s surface. “It looked like one large gray rock,” Sullivan said. “Maybe twenty feet across with some smaller ones within yards—covered in guano. The water around it was what you would expect. White waves and froth. There were 50 to 100 gulls squawking and most in flight—not happy about the intrusion.”

I found this tidbit fascinating and cross-checked the tide. It was indeed on the low ebb. A few feet closer to the Rock, and Enterprise, Sullivan said: “would have gone down within an hour.”

Brad Mongeau is yet another Boeing engineer—a 60-year-old retiree who spent his career conceiving the toughest, lightest aircraft possible. In the late ’80s, he motored a 16-foot skiff to the outer Channel Islands to fish, dive, and explore. He’s since spent better than 40 nights atop Cortes Bank—completely alone. The fit, funny, and gregarious skipper lives in a modest Long Beach home with his wife Jenny. He showed off eerie photos of Jalisco. On the seafloor lay Joe Kirkwood’s infamous anchor chain—complete with split link. Jutting from her hull, blooms of barnacle-crusted daggers. “That’s the rebar,” he said. “As it rusts away, it self-sharpens.”

In 1991, Mongeau employed his aerospace chops to hand-build a 19-foot skiff, Lovesthesea. Her sole purpose; to reliably reach the outer Channel Islands and Cortes Bank. Outfitted with foul weather gear, fresh water tanks, and hard- core camp accessories, the boat could survive a zombie mermaid apocalypse. “I built her like an airplane,” he said. “Every component as big as can be—and with as few components as possible.”

A portal beneath the bow berth reveals the world below. “I’ve seen blue sharks, blue whales, Bluefin tuna, orca, yellowtail, giant sea bass, dolphins, and gray whales through it.”

“You know,” he added, “I hate to say this, but Cortes—it’s been kind of worked over by fishermen. But in my imagination—my heart of hearts, it’s the last place before Hawaii. The last kelp forest. The last physical feature of the West Coast. And when I’m out there, I’m thinking anything could happen. It still has the greatest potential for seeing something wild of any place in the California Bight. I love the desolation. I love being there . . . It’s just an absolutely incredible feeling. Then at night, in the dark, you hear buzzing, hissing, wings flapping, breathing, snorting, coughing, splashes. It’s a wonderland. One night—just this completely calm night. I hear huge breathing out in the pitch black. I’m lying in my bed and hear it coming a little closer. Shine my light and then I hear it again. And then pretty soon, this thing comes right up and breathes this huge breath right next to my skiff. I jump up and see this just huge swirl. I don’t know what it was. Could have been anything.”

-----
“Man, this day looks exactly like it did the first time we ever came out here back in 1990.”

It’s January 28, 2014. Sam George and I are sitting just off Bishop Rock with a small crew of filmmakers and rescuers Frank Quirarte and Jonathan Hoover— both of whom share responsibility for Greg Long being alive today. One day after making the finals at the 2014 Mavericks contest, Greg’s staring out at a 15-foot set with tears streaming down his face. It’s the most beautiful ocean I think any of us has ever seen. The water’s like blue air. We can easily see lobster and garibaldi skittering through the kelp forest on the seafloor. Aboard skis, frolicking sea lions zoom at us before arcing away at the last instant. The waves aren’t huge, they’re just astoundingly beautiful.

Greg paddles out completely alone, right above the Jalisco. There he sits for a long time, with only a curious sea lion as company, before a deep, azure set bends toward him. I’ll let him describe the rest:

“There was lots of internal dialogue. Everything that led to me being out there on that day in 2012. Finding my way back into the ocean, and back into riding big waves. Finding that love and comfort—to the point where it all made sense again. The immaculate beauty of Cortes. The mystery of it. These beautiful realizations of how lucky I am in this life. I mean, just look where I am, and what I’m doing, after everything that’s happened to me. My dad, going to all ends to make sure I had what I needed. That I have friends who, at the drop of a hat, would jump on a plane or drive overnight and go through the same B.S.—choosing to be out here and keep an eye on me, and be a part of all this.

“Then when I caught my first wave, it felt like weight had been lifted. It was far from the biggest or best wave of my life, but just being back out there and riding a wave was overcoming something. Letting something go. It was the most memorable session of my life. It was surreal, man. It literally felt like a dream.”

Few places in the ocean are more raw and unprotected than the Cortes Bank. The U.S. claims these spectacular, mythic seamounts as part of its outer continental shelf, but affords them few safeguards from overfishing, or gas and oil exploration, or mineral extraction. Hopefully, that will soon change.

As I began this epilogue, I learned from Greg Long and Surfrider Foundation CEO Chad Nelsen, that Cortes and Tanner have some serious allies. In fact, by the time this book is published, President Obama may have declared the Cortes Bank National Marine Monument, protecting the Cortes and Tanner Banks, and the prolific spawning grounds between the two peaks. It’s my hope he will also rename the Bishop Rock the Bishop-MacRae Rock.

Resource extraction will be permanently banned, while sustainable recreational and commercial fishing, spearfishing, diving and yes, big wave surfing, will all be protected.

Whether or not the banks are protected by the time you read this, I encourage you to find out more by visit cortes.surfrider.org. This is a designation at least 20 million years in the making.

—Chris Dixon, Charleston, South Carolina, January, 2016.