Lisbon (AFP)
Several extreme surfers were trying Thursday morning to dominate the huge swell in Praia do Norte, the famous Nazaré spot reached by the first giant waves of autumn, in central Portugal.
As announced by the weather forecast, the morning offered in this coastal town located about a hundred kilometers north of Lisbon exceptional conditions despite a light fog, with walls of water that could reach 20m high.
Nazaré saw several hundred curious and big wave enthusiasts disembark at dawn from all over Europe to admire the spectacle.
Despite the Covid-19 epidemic, a compact crowd gathered around the Nazaré lighthouse, perched on top of a cliff, not always respecting social distancing and wearing a mask, a journalist from AFP.
This subsequently led the local authorities to prohibit access to the lighthouse in order to avoid an excessive concentration of spectators.
Among the ten 'fat' surfers present in the water, we found the German Sebastian Steudtner or the French Justine Dupont.
All these breaker tamers have the same ambition: to descend the biggest wave possible and one day manage to beat the world record, owned by Brazilian Rodrigo Koxa since November 8, 2017 with a 24.38 m wave surfed in Nazaré.
For that they practice the "tow-in", a technique which consists in being towed by a jet-ski in order to catch bigger waves than with the only force of the arms, as in traditional surfing.
The site of Praia do Norte has optimal characteristics for surfing giant waves due to the geological phenomenon called the "Nazaré canyon": a fault at the bottom of the sea 170 km long and 5 km deep which propels the swell of the Atlantic Ocean towards the coast.
© 2020 AFP