No 33: Did Twiggy snap the record?

Photographers and onlookers, as well as those who have pored over the photographs taken by Alan van Gysen, Brenton Geach and Craig Kolesky, are calling it the biggest wave surfed in history, a wave maybe 75 feet high.

The thing about photographs is that they give one time to ponder a frozen moment. A snapshot gives you time to scrutinise a tiny figure against the backdrop of a Jack and the Beanstalk wall. But there is nothing like being there.

And those who were there are saying they have never seen anything like it.

Conditions were brutal, with a sea buckled by moving mountains and massive spumes of spray that had hardened big wave surfers quivering at the knees. Several guys reported all sorts of weird reactions after riding their waves.

Australian Mark Visser: "I was towed into one giant wave that was so big I was terrified and started hyper-ventilating."

Twiggy reportedly threw up, a physiological reaction to total sensory overload. Forget those boring Fear Factor stunts, being exposed to forces so brutish, and so raw, evokes the darkest form of primeval terror. It is a place where every nerve-ending is on fire, and every synapsis is firing like a V-8 spark plug at 10000 revs, drenching the body with adrenaline and bringing it to the point of catatonic shutdown.

Some people, particularly those from across the Atlantic Ocean, call the wave by American Mike Parsons at the Cortes Bank - a sea mount 105 miles off the Southern California coast - in January this year as the biggest wave ever ridden. Parsons won the biggest wave award at the Billabong XXL awards in May for a wave measured at a little more than 70 foot. It was a step up from the 66 footer he rode in 2001 - also at Cortes - previously acknowledged as the biggest wave ever ridden.

Interestingly, Twiggy and Long were out at Cortes with Parsons, and his tow partner Brad Gerlach, earlier this year. A bomb ridden by Twiggy had also got him nominated for the XXL awards, but he was runner up to Parson, perhaps because the bottom of Parsons' wave could not be seen in the photos the judges used, suggesting there was more wave face to consider.

That's the weird thing about judging the size of big waves, something that is endlessly debated by surfers the world over. Judges are not on the jetski trying to outgun a giant feathering bonecrusher rearing above them, or ramping over 12 foot walls of white water. Judges are sitting nice and comfy in a well-lit room with a cup of steaming Macchiato at their side while they study photographs or video clips.  Sometimes they must resort to a bit of Photoshop work to cut out the tiny figure, and then repeat it vertically, counting how many tiny figures it takes from the top to the bottom of the wave. It's not much more scientific than that.

You would therefore think that since Twiggy has actually been out there at both 'biggest wave' scenarios, he is qualified to comment on the session out at Tafelberg. But he is a polite South African surfer, who is self-effacing, and typically undercalls the experience, which of course comes across as ambivalent.

"The waves were definitely the biggest I've ever seen in South Africa and possibly the biggest anywhere," Baker says.

But when the guys saw photos taken by Kolesky using a large lens from Chapman's Peak, "we realised that those were possibly the biggest waves ever recorded, on a par with the rides we had a Cortes Bank in January which were measured at well over 70 feet."

So I might have to go with our Australian friend Visser, who says "I think they smashed the waves surfed at Cortes Bank in January."

We may not have won any gold medals at the Olympics, but this record is pretty impressive, even if it has to be shared with another country.

Twiggy rides a bough wave at Tafelberg, August 9, 2008