It May Have Been the Biggest Wave Ever Surfed

At least some members of the surfing community are confident there's a new world record for the largest wave ever surfed, recorded at California's own Mavericks Beach, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. The world-renowned surfing spot saw massive waves on Dec. 23, which "left the Santa Cruz Wharf snapped and floating in the ocean," per SFGate. Undeterred by the swell, 23-year-old Alessandro "Alo" Slebir of Santa Cruz caught a towering wave that's been estimated at 108 feet high—easily the largest wave ever ridden. The current world record, set by Sebastian Steudtner in October 2020, is 86 feet. It came in Nazaré, Portugal, which was also the site of the two previous records, per Newsweek.

The estimate comes from the Mavericks Rescue Team, which said its calculation used "the same state of the art technology developed by Porsche engineering and team Steudtner." "In the next few weeks we will confirm the height using the same method used to measure at Nazare," the team wrote on Instagram. "Judging surf wave heights is inherently difficult and contentious," per SFGate, which reports "it took 18 months of review before the Guinness World Records anointed the current biggest wave ever surfed." Still, Dec. 23 at Mavericks "has been described within the big-wave surfing community as one of the greatest days in the history of the break ... fueled by a once-in-a-decade swell," per Surfer Today.

Paddling into the waves was "nearly impossible," so surfers had to be towed on jet skis, per Surfer Today. Around 3:15pm, tow partner Luca Padua led Slebir into a wave that just "felt different," Slebir told the outlet. "When I turned at the bottom, it felt like I was being sucked back up the face," he said. "I knew it was a big wave, but the speed made it hard to grasp just how big. When I reached the channel and heard the cheers, I realized it was something extraordinary." Bill Sharp, event director of the Big Wave Challenge surfing competition, tells Newsweek "the wave was ridden almost perfectly and was extremely well documented so the judges should have a relatively easy path to coming up with a face height." (More surfing stories.)