Stream It Or Skip It: ‘100 Foot Wave’ on HBO Max, A Docu-Series About Seeking And Surfing The Gnarliest-Ever Wave

The six chapter docuseries 100 Foot Wave (HBO Max) explores the dream that drives mercurial big wave surfer Garrett McNamara, i.e. to ride the biggest wave of them all, the elusive 100-footer. The story travels backward and forward, revealing the origin story of tow-in surfing and McNamara’s involvement with it while chronicling his efforts to conquer the otherworldly waves off Nazare, Portugal.  

100 FOOT WAVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Nazare, Portugal. Sunlight bounces off the surface of a roiling sea as tall, ruddy cliffs rise on the shore to the boxy brick visage of The Fort of São Miguel Arcanjo and its attached lighthouse. “The idea of surfing a 100 foot wave, it came purely from trying to get the rush,” Garret McNamara says in voiceover. “There was no wave too big; it was just bigger, bigger, bigger.”

The Gist: It took retirement from the international pro surfing circuit for Garrett McNamara to finally discover and tame his biggest-ever wave. That’s the rub as we meet the tall, lanky McNamara, who in his fortysomethings has salt and pepper creeping into his close cropped cut. He thought his days on the board were behind him, but with the 1990’s advent of tow-in surfing — utilizing watercraft to deposit a surfer at a more dynamic starting point of a wave than possible by human-powered paddling — McNamara reengaged with the sport, and at the Tow-In World Cup in 2002, held at the Jaws surf break in Peahi, Hawaii, he rode the deepest-ever barrel wave and survived to reap the rewards. To search and ride the world’s biggest waves became GMAC’s passion, and 100 Foot Wave shuttles through the pins in his personal map of the surfing world: Tahiti, Fiji, Norway, Morocco, Mexico.

McNamara says his search wasn’t about harboring some kind of death wish. Instead he was always focused, always sure of what he wanted to attempt. And when a guy in Nazare, Portugal randomly emailed him a photo of one of the region’s typically gargantuan waves, McNamara became focused on surfing it. By 2010, he and his wife Nicole were onsite in the quiet fishing village, and 100 Foot Wave details his single minded drive to not only surf there, but to develop the infrastructure that would make Nazare the latest stop on the world big wave surfing tour. Along the way we meet his dedicated team of locals, the project managers, cameramen, logistics technicians, financiers, and even the chefs who made the endeavor possible, as well as a rag tag group of individuals drawn from the international community of surfing enthusiasts who would become McNamara’s in-water tow-in support and safety team in a place with the kind of waves nobody had ever even attempted to surf. (In fact, Nazare was hesitant about McNamara’s project, given the town’s long, sad history of fishing industry-related fatalities. The sea is a dangerous place.) As the first chapter of 100 Foot Wave rides to a close, GMAC has his team in place and a handle on the awe-inspiring power of the Nazare waves. All that’s left is to do the damn thing.

What Show Will It Remind You Of? Glacier Project is a 2015 adventure sports film that chronicles Garret McNamara and fellow big wave surfer Keali’i Mamala’s attempts to ride the tsunami waves created by calving glaciers in Alaska. And in his search for an elusive eight-story wave that borders on the manic, there’s another search that comes to mind, that of Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) and his fixation on the “50-year storm” in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 action classic Point Break.

Our Take: “Garrett actually asked the question,” surfer and support team member Al Mennie says of seeing Nazare for the first time alongside the famous surfer. “”You are doing this for your own reasons, aren’t you?’ Which made me realize he understood that this place is very, very dangerous. He understands the ocean, in terms of big waves, as well as if not better than any big wave surfer on the planet. So for him to tell us that this place is dangerous, that really made me go, ‘Hmm, how dangerous is this?’ The profound dangers of big wave surfing and insane levels of wind fetch are always front and center in 100 Foot Wave, but then so are the egos of those who’ve decided that they’re the mortals who were put on Earth to tame God’s wrath. And to that end, there’s a really interesting segment in “Sea Monsters,” the series’ first chapter, where the physical breakdown of the Nazare Wave Zone is revealed, and how its volatility is informed by an undersea canyon three miles deep that compresses and accelerates the water before it’s displaced above the surface as a wave that resembles a sweeping thumb eight stories tall. Garrett McNamara analyzes this data and simply points to a spot where the tow in will begin. “There. That’s where we’ll surf.” Like Mennie said, GMAC understands the ocean.

All the certainty in the world won’t guarantee you aren’t killed, of course, and there’s plenty in 100 Foot Wave to suggest that McNamara’s mercurial nature is the source of both his big wave success and a near-constant sense of mortal jeopardy. But he makes for a compelling central figure in a docuseries that’s also attempting to showcase some of the world’s biggest sources of scary fluid dynamics.

Sex and Skin: Nope.

Parting Shot: As the waves and whitewater crash over each other, lit by the orange morning sunlight, Garrett McNamara appears in close-up. “There’s all these guys searching for the 100 foot wave; everyone wants to ride the 100 foot wave. I know it’s here, and I know it’s for real. So, mark my words: we’ll be riding one out here someday.”

Sleeper Star: Rangy, red-beared Irishman Al Mennie was a self-taught tow-line surfer in his native land when he got the call to join McNamara’s support team in Portugal, where he was promptly blown away by the scope and force of the wave zone. “Nazare isn’t like any other big wave spot,” he explains in an interview. “It’s a different animal. It comes in, and it gets taller, and taller, and it wobbles, and it moves and it shifts and it breaks a bit, and then it breaks a bit more, and then… WHOOOAAAAHCCCCH” (At this, Mennie thrusts his upraised hands forward in one powerful motion, pushing air out of his cheeks like a campfire storyteller.)

Most Pilot-y Line: Hawaii, 2019. McNamara is seen relaxing at home with his wife and children, surfing for fun in the warm ocean. But his steely glare is elsewhere. “I’m getting ready physically, mentally, spiritually, to return to Nazare.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. 100 Foot Wave brings to bear the sheer force of the waves its subject is surfing, but is enlightening, too, offering insights into the world of professional tow-in surfing and the personalities involved in making it happen at sea level.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch 100 Foot Wave on HBO Max