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I Hate Watched HBO's “100 Foot Wave” and Fell in Love.

I Hate Watched HBO's “100 Foot Wave” and Fell in Love.

I have been swept off my feet by Garrett McNamara.

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Inherent Bummer
Jun 04, 2025
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I Hate Watched HBO's “100 Foot Wave” and Fell in Love.
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I believe I was in the room when Garrett McNamara first called the Surfing Magazine offices claiming he’d found the world’s biggest wave in Portugal. Upon further review, and some inside jokes about Garrett’s “Michelin Man” flotation devices, we all decided it was tall, but a giant mushburger. Garrett’s persistence paid off in the long run of course and Nazaré was everything he said it was and more. 

Many years later during a family holiday, I found myself sitting down with my in-laws to watch the highly marketed first episode of HBO’s “100 Foot Wave” — the documentary series about Garrett McNamara and his pioneering of Nazaré. I prepared for the worst. Mainstream documentaries of surfing usually presented a pretty horsepower heavy and more embarrassing version of surfing than the one I know. And with Garrett leading the way, there were a lot of directions this could go… 

We should probably have something else to watch, I suggested. This would likely be yet another setback in my ongoing explanation to them about our nuanced culture and I would end up in another stuttering diatribe about how this “wasn’t exactly surfing” as I knew it. How I didn’t want to ride a 100-foot wave nor did I have a Red Bull jet ski in the garage. 

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