Imagine moving your family to a remote Portuguese fishing village just to try and ride something that could kill you in one second flat.
Tim Ferriss said in his 5 Bullet Friday: “This HBO miniseries is blowing my mind. Both my girlfriend and I are loving it.”
Trailer for “100 Foot Wave”
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- McNamara set a world record in 2011 by riding a 78-foot wave at Nazaré. This was after nearly dying at Mavericks just months earlier.
- McNamara gets back on the jet ski despite a fractured shoulder, two broken ribs, and a foot that looks like it belongs to a cartoon character.
Watch “100 Foot Wave”
You can watch “100 Foot Wave” on HBOMax.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 92/100
- IMDB Rating: 8.1/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: 88/100 (Users); not yet rated (Critics)
Director’s Note: This 6-part docuseries was directed by Chris Smith, best known for “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” (we rated this one 90/100) and “Tiger King” (we rated this one 95/100). Each episode flows like a swell. They build tension, revealing the power of the ocean and showcasing the people crazy enough to try to master it.
Release Date: July 18, 2021 (Season 1), April 16, 2023 (Season 2)
My Review of “100 Foot Wave”
The Setup
The series opens with Garrett McNamara, a 44-year-old big wave legend, limping out of near-retirement and heading to Nazaré, Portugal—a place with almost zero surf reputation in 2010. But Garrett sees something no one else does: a chance to break every record in the sport.
What follows is part oceanography lesson, part personal redemption arc. McNamara not only recovers from a brutal injury, but helps build a surf ecosystem in a town where most residents had never even touched a surfboard.
More Highlights from the Doc
- The waves are supercharged by an underwater canyon system right off the coast. It’s geological freak of nature turned into a man-made surf factory.
- Nazaré had no surf culture before this. Locals fished, not surfed. Now it’s the epicenter of big wave riding.
- Garrett trains with the same intensity as an Olympic athlete. Stretching, visualizing, and testing jet ski partners like Formula 1 pit crews.
- Nazaré locals help rebuild the infrastructure—lighthouses, lookouts, safety teams—all for a sport most of them hadn’t heard of a decade earlier.
- Surfer Justine Dupont becomes the breakout star in later episodes—challenging gender norms and going toe-to-toe with the biggest waves out there.
- Chasing the “100-foot wave” becomes almost a spiritual quest. Garrett talks about dreams, signs, and what it means to chase something that may not even exist yet.
- Each season captures one or two massive swells. Jet skis whip surfers into 70-80 ft. monsters, and wipeouts look like CGI but are 100% real.
Lesser-Known Details from the Doc
- The Nazaré underwater canyon is 16,000 feet deep at its max and funnels swell energy directly into Praia do Norte like a hose nozzle.
- McNamara lived in Hawaii but moved his whole family to Portugal during the surf season to be closer to “the beast.”
- The jet ski pilots are just as important as the surfers—some tow-ins last seconds, others require surgical precision to avoid getting crushed by 40-ton waves.
- Locals helped construct a cliffside lookout post—where spotters use binoculars and radios to direct tow teams into the right wave windows.
- Even the rescue system is DIY—McNamara and crew built their safety protocols from scratch, including pickup drills and underwater hold-down training.
Wrap Up:
This doc is about obsession, reinvention, and the physics of doing the impossible. Even if you’ve never touched a surfboard, “100 Foot Wave” will leave you breathless. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc