A Brazilian surfer might have ridden the biggest wave of all time on Monday.
Carlos Burle got in the water at Praia do Norte in Portugal with three other surfers with the express intent of catching the big one.
The surfers knew they had a shot at the world record with 100-foot waves crashing near the coast of one of the world’s preeminent big wave surf spots.
The previous Guinness World Record for the largest wave ever surfed was set at the same break in 2011 by Hawaiian Garrett McNamara when he rode a 78-foot monster.
But conditions on Monday were bolstered by the St. Jude storm, which battered much of Europe over the weekend, and the waves were noticeably taller than when McNamara set the world record.
Most of the other surfers had already finished surfing on Monday when Burle finally rode the potentially world-record setting wave.
“It was luck. We never know when we will be catching the wave. I still hadn’t surfed any wave and everyone had already had their rides. Maya [Gabeeira] almost died. For me, it was a big adrenaline moment to get back there after what happened,” Burle told Surfer Today.
Burle is no newcomer to the big wave surfing scene seeing as he rode a 72-foot wave at Mavericks, in northern California in 2001 and his newest conquest will now be analyzed by Guinness to determine if he set the world record.