big waves

It's been two weeks since Garrett McNamara rode his latest Nazare behemoth and enough time has passed to allow some perpsective. Not that it's really required; it was the mainstream world that went into a lather while the surfing world did little more than blink at the size of Garrett's wave. We clicked 'like' on the Facebook photo and quickly shuffled on to other matters faster than you can say 'Kony'.

In surfing, as in most physical endeavours, the boundaries of performance creep, rather than rush, forward. Just as Olympic world records are ticked off by mere hundredths of a second, so too are the criteria for surfing - higher, faster, deeper - broken in increments.

The exception to this rule occurred over the course of one hour in January 1990.