Natxo has ridden a lot of great waves, but this one took the cake. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
On December 22, Natxo Gonzalez caught the best wave of his life. He’s surfed a lot of really good waves over the course of his career, but this one topped them all.
It wasn’t an easy road — no road that ends in something this wonderful is — but it was one worth taking. Natxo, like many surfers who chase waves like those that break at Mullaghmore Head, has been plagued by injuries. He fought through them all, continued to focus on what he wanted, and when it all came together, he was ready for it.
When dawn broke, Mullaghmore was firing. A breath of offshore wind brushed across a huge, long-period swell. Massive, perfect waves were reeling, and Natxo got on the phone to call the usual suspects.
“We get there and saw the first set,” Natxo remembered. “It was really, really clean. Heavy and powerful; crazy bowls.”
He paddled out with Connor McGuire, but it was then that he realized it might not be as good as it looked. “It was not hitting the peak as much that day,” he continued. “I don’t know why. At one point when the tide got super low, nobody was making the waves… at one point, I thought that the safety guys were going to stop us from surfing because it was really ledgy and really dangerous.”
They kept on pushing, though, in hopes that the dream wave was on the way. And for Natxo, it was. “I was pulling back for two hours,” he said. “We couldn’t paddle. Even the boys were thinking about towing, and I was like, ‘man, today if you get the good one, it’s the wave of your life.'”
And Natxo got the good one. In this short film from Oxbow, he breaks down exactly what happened next.
