This Nazaré JetSki Wipeout Could Have Ended Really Badly

Alex Wippel knows Nazaré. He first laid eyes on the place back in 2012, just a few years after Garrett McNamara received a life-changing proposition from Portuguese officials who wanted to show the world just how big the wave could be. He knew then that he needed to be a part of riding that wave. Part of riding that wave, however, is riding a JetSki, and when you mix a heavy vehicle and enormous, difficult to read waves… well, there’s going to be a few mishaps. Wippel broke down exactly what happened to him during one particularly scary mishap.

A wave — not the biggest wave we’ve seen at Nazaré, thank goodness — broke on his back as he attempted to outrun it. He had a safety sled hanging off the back, and a rope dragging too. When he leapt off the ski, that rope wrapped around his waist. Although the wave wasn’t the biggest, the power of Nazaré is pretty extraordinary.

““I fell off the ski, and the rope got tangled around my waist,” he explained. “She dragged me underwater, and I inflated. I saw the set coming, and it hit me right on the back, but I couldn’t get the rope off my waist, so she dragged me under a second one.”

All ended reasonably well, considering the circumstances and how much worse it could have been, but it’s likely that Wippel will walk away from this accident with even more respect for the place than he already had.

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