This wave is not for the faint of heart, but those with the right heart get to experience something incredible. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Ireland can be a wild place for a surfer. It’s not a place with swaying palms and endlessly blue skies. The water isn’t balmy. The storms out there in the wide Atlantic are powerful, and the waves they create carry that power with them. Waves like Mullaghmore. Waves like Aileen’s. Tim Bonython release the second part of his journey to the latter, and it is better than the first.
“If you’ve seen part one, you already know what this coastline can do,” Bonython said. “But part two… this is the day it stepped up. A bigger swell. Cleaner lines. Super strong offshore winds. The kind of morning at the Cliffs of Moher that makes even the world’s best pause before they paddle.”
When the conditions are like they are in the video you see here, no one is comfortable, not even the best big wave surfers in the world.
“This was as big as it gets out there — maxing, heaving, and absolutely unforgiving,” Bonython continued.
“And with that wind, carnage was guaranteed. Even the elite — Nathan Florence, Russell Bierke, Tom Lowe, and Willem Banks — were getting properly tested, trying to knife into towering, top-to-bottom barrels that looked like they could swallow a building.”
Sometimes in a big wave session, there’s a moment that all the surfers are hoping to experience. It’s when an impossible line is drawn; an impossible drop made; an impossible barrel escaped. There were a few of those this day, but one stood out: Willem Banks making an improbable air drop.
“Wait until you see Willem fall out of the sky on what had to be 15–20 feet, somehow hold his line, set his rail, and ride clean out of one of the waves of the swell,” Bonython said. “It’s the kind of ride that makes you rewind just to believe it.”
Ireland is more than just waves, though — the waves, in fact, are just a cherry on top of one of the world’s most beautiful areas, so Bonython made sure include a few minutes showcasing it before the action.
“We ease you in with a slow roll through the Irish countryside,” Bonython wrote. “Green hills, winding roads, that quiet beauty that makes you forget what’s about to unfold at the edge of the Atlantic.”
Once you see what unfolds, however, you won’t ever forget it.
