nazare surfing history

Nazare, depending on the swell direction, can be steep or very slopey.
Nazare is a huge and dangerous wave, no question.
But, its massive height in the photos from the headland is a bit of an optical illusion.

Belharra, I think, has some sort of trench leading to the Belharra reef.

But, imagine how high this Justine Dupont wave at Belharra would look from a hundred metres or so elevation.

Interesting reading guys and interesting topic, good stuff

I am in awe, and would go back to my room and hide blubbering under my bed for 5 hours if I even saw something like that, but if vertical wave height measurements are relevant, then this theoretical Nazare wave height diagram probably has some truth.

It in no way, for me, takes away from the awesomeness of what is being achieved.

the fact that Nazaré holds big surf has been known for a long time in the euro surf community. There had been a pic and a description in the 2000 edition of the Stormrider Guide Europe. the place had quite a few bodyboard contests as well, nowadays a world tour event. I checked and surfed the place on a few trips only to about dOH but had some serious hold downs in the shorey. A 5 wave set nailed me in the channel, with the current locking me right in place. At that size it is more of a bodyboard wave.
There might have been Portugese and others surfing it at size. The focus of the small Portugese big wave crew in the 90s and 2000s had been Madeira. Portugese surfers are also quite territorial and don´t travel a lot. Nazaré does not have other waves in the vicinity, only shorebreak closeouts around 40km each way. Remember Tiago Pires was the first full time Portugese pro. A lot of the locals cant afford breaking their boards
Can´t say much about the sand, it is quite coarse and similar to the texture as the sand at supertubos were the banks always seem to stay in place as well. Never hit the bottom outside but a lot waves end as closeouts in the shorebreak. Sometimes the current drags you towards the rocks below the cliffs, no place I would like to be in serious surf.
If you need more info, maybe contact Joao Valente at the Surf Portugal mag http://www.surfportugal.pt/noticias-surf-portugal-7 He has been around a while

p.s. I think the locals (about 10 of them) all bodyboard. They are quite young.

Relating to the questions on East Coast Canyons, whilst they may not be the size of the ones talk about in this thread, off the top of my head, there is several off the Central Coast, Norah Canyons and also Seal Rocks Canyons sitting off the shelf.
I remember as a young grom, all the older fellas used to talk about the canyons in that area focussing swell into the likes of Forresters.

No doubt a factor at Kalbarri with the Abrolhos too.

I agree Cam re west swells seeing less bottom friction affects at Bluff, with south swells travelling over the shelf for longer, 100km or so. It would be good to find out an easy calculation for swell energy loss due to bottom friction taking in period/size etc.

No stand on board and dive from McNamara Stu????

stunet wrote:

"Being a beachie though , i can't see much chance of succesful paddle campaigns."

What makes you say that Southey?

 

You have to love the look on his face when he turns around and sees what's coming!

Imho tomorrow (Fri)will be about dOH. Check the surfline Nazaré feature if you can stand listening to gmacs voice. I am not a big wave surfer, but I would caution against taking the lefts on a big day. the sand is making a bend westwards north of the peaks, it will be extremely hard to get back out there. Paddle out from town about 1,5-2km to the peak through deep water.
The spot is praia do norte. Praia do Nazaré is the town beach which sometimes has a peak in a big swell, but nothing special.
Stormrider guide is a very popular guide book in Europe, lots of good info in there.

A bit off topic but if you have a 4000m trench that jumps up to 7m within 40 odd NM are you going to get some fucking big waves on a swell like the one that lit up Indo this year? Just wondering how close the trench needs to be to the land mass to make a significant difference

Next swell much bigger, pity about the winds.

how do i upload images here? I was there in september, it was flat, but took a bunch of photos of the context you might like to look at.

see the section at the bottom of the page "photos"tells you how.

just looked at google street view, then looked at my photos. meh i got nothin'...

No not at all Camel, it's still probably under-forecasting. Raw model data correct, just the size conversion for that region has to be boosted to the canyon focussing.

caml wrote:

Yeah you are tux . Much bigger than the cow bommie got to on that swell

Thanks Caml

https://www.facebook.com/steudtner/photos/a.150679234983104.42349.120427...

Does this help ?

20ft++? Looked way bigger than that! Bloody huge.

Where'd ya get the 14 seconds from Camel? Was that model forecast or an actual buoy reading?

I haven't been keeping an eye on the charts but I know our model majorly undercalls for Nazare proper (having such a unique bathy profile, it requires a unique surf height algorithm). We've got a fix for that in the next few weeks, and we'll monitor it this season to see how it performs.

What did MSW or the other sites call it that day ?

caml wrote:

Ben earlier this thread( as written above ) I pointed out how swellnet called 2-4ft when it was 10-12 ft . But point being that theres a bit of disagreement about wave height etc & swellnets forecast is a bit under the real thing .

Yeah we know it's under.. got a fix on the way. Just curious where your 14 seconds was though (model forecast or live data) - I haven't been monitoring this neck of the woods but I do recall seeing the 10m winds from the North Atlantic, and Tp should have been much higher than 14 seconds. Live buoy data is just a little hard to obtain from this neck of the woods, that's all.

Would of mixed the local windswell with the groundswell and under-forecast the period for sure.

And Cam, it was 6m @15s

This raw swell forecast would of been about right (if not slightly over with windswell contamination), but our on site conversions to the size seen at the beach needs to still be tweaked.

Udo, MSW underforecast massively.

Remember they deal in face feet, so only forecast 10ft+ this morning, but we've still got 15-20ft (needs to be tweaked upwards still)..

Interesting that MSW's primary swell is 12ft @ 14 seconds, whilst ours is 5.7m (18.5ft) @ 14.5 seconds. 

Their model-derived height estimate is 30% less than ours. That's a HUGE discrepency.

Cam, got the buoy data from just of Nazare.

Here it is..

First is the Significant Wave Height in blue with period in red, looks to match our model forecasts..

And now Maximum Wave Height with period..

Buoy is just WSW of Nazare..

And Significant Wave Height peaks at just over 6m @ about 16s, then hovers between 4.5-5.5 @15-16s.

Maximum Wave Height peaks about 8.5m and hovers between 5.5m and 7.8m.

Swell for the weekend was smaller in size and peaked around 4.32m significant wave height but with larger with peak periods of 17-18s.

Note the red and blue lines are switched, compared to the graph above.

I'll have a dig for our model forecast data when I get a chance.