Riders On The Storm
Are you feeling brave? The latest iteration of Tudor’s flagship dive watch has your back
Surfers test their mettle against waves over 80ft
There is surfing, and then there is big-wave surfing. Surfing is fun; it’s about kicking back, tuning in and dropping out. Sure, there’s an element of danger, but really it’s about the vibes, man. But there’s nothing fun about big-wave surfing, or at least, not for the sound of mind. At various spots around the world, at various times of the year, riders take to the seas to test their mettle against waves that regularly exceed
80ft. This year, German surfer Sebastian Steudtner set a record for the highest wave ever surfed, having skittered along an 86-footer on its way into the beach at Nazaré in Portugal and shot out the end before it swallowed him whole.
Akin to Mavericks in California and Jaws in Hawaii, the Nazaré break is home to the tallest waves in the world, but its surf-Mecca status has only been established for a decade or so. The sleepy fishing town was immortalised in 2010 when American big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara caught a 78ft giant just off the beach – after getting a tip-off from a clearly quite insane bodyboarding friend – and Nazaré’s legend has grown ever since. The topography of the coastal seabed allows for the extreme wave height, and the big-wave scene assumes that when someone finally conquers a 30m
(99ft) wave, it will be at Nazaré.
At the end of last year (the big-wave season runs from November to March), Tudor announced a partnership with the World Surf League on two of its most important events, the Jaws Big Wave Challenge in Maui, Hawaii, and the Tow Surfing Challenge in Nazaré. Tow surfing is exactly as it sounds: the waves are so big that riders need to be towed on to them by jet ski, because if they tried to paddle in, they would likely be chewed up before the wave even got going. Tudor had some skin in the game, courtesy of local lad, brand ambassador and former European surfer of the year Nic von Rupp, who won the best team performance award alongside Brazilian rider Lucas ‘Chumbo’ Chianca.
Von Rupp wears the Pelagos, Tudor’s flagship diver, one of the best-loved waterproof watches on the market. It launched in 2012 alongside the Black Bay models that gave Tudor star status among watch aficionados. Various Pelagos iterations have followed – some tougher, some more sleek – but the latest might be the most handsome of the lot.
The Pelagos 39 is at once familiar and unusual. It has the requisite snowflake hands, rotating bezel and diver-gogglesfriendly dial layout, but as with the Black Bay Pro that launched earlier this year, it’s 3mm smaller than other Pelagoses in the range – hence the ‘39’. And it’s light, thanks to the Grade 2 titanium case and bracelet. On your wrist it feels like a dress watch, as if you’re barely wearing a watch at all. It features an in-house COSC-certified automatic movement; luminescent ceramic composite monobloc hour markers for increased underwater legibility; and comes equipped with a spare rubber strap, should the titanium bracelet feel too nice for the beach. But we think the 39’s biggest virtue is the dial, which has just the right amount of negative space. There’s no date window cluttering the place, nor is there too much text. When you’re hurtling down the face of a wave the size of an office block, space and legibility come in handy. tudorwatch.com