Surfers caught waves as tall as 50 feet high Sunday in Hawaii, producing epic rides and wipeouts during the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.
More than 20,000 spectators showed up at Waimea Bay for the world’s most prestigious big-wave competition on the waves that exceeded the height of three-story buildings.
“The conditions are insane right now,” Luke Shepardson, the 2023 champion, told the World Surf League between his heats. “There’s monsters coming in right now. The last couple sets were treacherous. But yeah, it’s 50, 60 (feet) on the face…”
Liam McNamara, the contest director, told reporters the waves reached a height of 50 feet.
The contest was held for only the 11th time since its inception. That’s because waves must reach at least 40 feet to meet competition criteria.
Hawaii’s Landon McNamara, 28, won with a three-wave point total of 135.8 points. That included a perfect score of 50 on the highest-scoring wave of the contest. He won $50,000 and 350,000 miles on Hawaiian Airlines.
“This is a childhood dream of mine, something I’ve been working on since, you know, a little kid on the beach here watching these events go down,” McNamara, son of the contest director, said during the trophy presentation. “I don’t know what to feel right now. I already cried 10 times. That’s why there’s no tears right now.”
As the competition drew to a close, McNamara said, he felt he was picked to win by Aikau, a late big-wave surfer and lifeguard who was credited with saving dozens of people from the surf. He died in 1978 at age 31 during a canoe accident in which he took his surfboard and swam for help but was never seen from again, according to the Independent and other published reports.
This year’s competition, sponsored by Rip Curl, drew top surfers from around the world. But Hawaiians dominated, with eight of the top nine finishers from the Aloha State.