No Man's Land

At the south side of the Farol lighthouse above Praia do Norte, the scale of Nazaré becomes difficult to process. The Atlantic delivers here with a force that has no equivalent, enormous swells detonating against the cliff face while the coastline, the rocks and the people watching from above reduce everything in the water to a single small point of reference. From my position, Lucas Chianca was that point.

He dropped into a massive peak already deep inside what surfers call no man's land. From that position, any mistake drives a surfer toward the cliffs, where the whitewater detonates against the rock face and rescue becomes extraordinarily difficult. Chianca hit a section of chop hidden beneath the whitewater and was suddenly airborne, fully launched from the face of the wave in the worst possible place to lose control. He never reconnected. The lip of what I estimated at 75 to 80 feet came down with complete force around him. Lucas was submerged in a mountain of whitewater at the most precarious point on the planet.

Leading the rescue was Sebastian Steudtner, Chianca's fiercest rival in the pursuit of the largest wave ever ridden. Rivalry vanished instantly. Steudtner drove his jet ski directly into the impact zone, threading through detonating whitewater beneath the cliffs until he located Chianca in the turbulence and pulled him clear.

Together they escaped what remains one of the most daring rescues I have witnessed at Nazaré.