Enormous Wave Video

image When I first saw this movie clip of a guy surfing a huge wave (windows media player file), I figured it had to be fake, especially since the wave just seems to get bigger and bigger as the camera pans out. But on second thought, I think it's real. Waves in Hawaii or Australia can get huge, and some of those surfers are insane enough to surf them. This clip seems to be footage from the surfing documentary Billabong Odyssey.

Sports

Posted on Tue Oct 12, 2004


Comments

I don't think waves make grumbly noises in real life.
Posted by john  on  Tue Oct 12, 2004  at  04:21 PM
Either way, it's pretty awesome footage.
Posted by Josh W  on  Wed Oct 13, 2004  at  07:39 PM
This wave looks like part of the footage shot off the north coast in 1980 or 1990-something for Hawaii's Big Wave Contest. Obviously I'm no surfer or I'd have all the details, but I saw the special on PBS twice. The Big Wave surfers get notified of unusually huge waves anywhere in the world, then they gather & compete.

In the PBS special, only a few of the big-wave guys even gave it a go because these were 80+ feet tall. They had to go to an off-shore reef area called, I think, The Cabins to catch the waves. A film company was there with an experienced (and possibly insane) helicopter pilot to film surfers for an IMAX movie.

Anyway, the waves were huge. Often, the surfer was only a dot, and the helicopter was down in the trough.

So, though I'm not certain this footage is from that particular show, it looks similar.

Maybe the grumbling sound was really the surfer screaming "Oh s***!", and the editor scrambled it to protect our ears.
Posted by Becky  on  Sat Oct 16, 2004  at  04:34 PM
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