Gotta laugh at yourself, right? Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
Niccolo Porcella didn’t get to be known as one of the best big wave surfers in the world by pulling his punches. In order to get good at surfing huge waves like Teahupo’o, one must get good at taking lumps. Porcella has taken his fair share, and in a recent interview with Tim Bonython, a man who dedicates his life to capturing the world’s biggest waves on camera, Porcella walks the viewer through a pair of back-to-back wipeouts that would crush most people’s souls.
“This is 100 percent the heaviest wipeout,” he said through a smile as he watched the first clip. “…That’s exactly 10 years ago. There’s so much water sucking up that the board stops. Literally just stops, like if you’re skateboarding and you hit a little rock. There’s that moment of like, ‘you gotta be kidding me. This is going to be hands down the heaviest wipeout you’re ever going to have.'”
As he felt himself get sucked over the lip at maxed out Chopes, Porcella fell back on his experience. The only thing one can do in a situation like that is give in. You’re not ever going to out-wrestle Mother Nature, after all.
“It’s time to relax and let it go,” Porcella explained. “You have to let the ocean do its thing. You’re not going to fight something that big.”
After he popped up safely, Porcella knew he had to get back on the horse right away. A quick 15-minute break was all he took before hopping back on the rope and getting yanked right back into another one. That other one, however, didn’t turn out all that great, either.
“That was kind of like my redemption wave,” he remembered. “Like, dude, ‘I’m not finishing on a wipeout.’ It’s pretty nuts looking back now. I was possessed. I had to prove myself. As soon as I hit the flats, I’m like, ‘I have to bail out, because this thing is already just morphed out – closing out. I want to come back home in one piece. I’d better eject right now.'”
That wave hammered him as well, but it was nothing like the first one. But it’s been a decade since these wipeouts, and it’s fair to say that Porcella wasn’t scared away from chasing the biggest waves known to man in the time since.
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