One of the few plus sides of the terrible weather in this country is the gigantic waves that very often come our way, such as the 50-foot monster that hit Mullaghmore Head in Sligo last week.
While the majority of us would be content to sit back and appreciate nature do its worst, there were some adrenaline junkies that simply had to experience it first-hand.
Some of the world’s top surfers descended on Mullaghmore last Thursday to brave the conditions that resulted from an extreme weather system known as the “Viking Storm”, which has generated some of the largest waves off the northwest coast of Ireland in recent years.
A group of 16 surfers from Ireland, Britain, France, Hawaii, Brazil, South Africa and Australia took to the water accompanied by two rescue boats, while hundreds of spectators looked on from the Mullaghmore headland.
The group took advantage of waves in the region of 25-50 feet, some of the highest ever recorded in these parts, with Devon surfer Andrew Cotton catching the best of the lot, a 50-footer (15.24 metres) on a day that was described by Irish pro surfer Richie Fitzgerald as “very calculated madness”.
The wave caught by Cotton fell about five metres short of the biggest ever wave recorded in Ireland last December, but it’s still about the size of a five-storey building and watching Cotton surf it is a sight to behold.
Check it out for yourself in the video above.
Thanks to Liam at swellseekers.ie for helping us out with this one. For more information on the wave and the Mullaghmore experience, click here.
