Garrett tells TMZ, the suit was enhanced with a special oxygen pocket developed by Camelback — the water canteen company — designed to hold a small oxygen reserve in the suit’s lining, allowing McNamara to breathe oxygen underwater through a straw.

According to Garrett, the suit would give him several extra minutes of survival in case a massive wave buries him below the surface — and in those situations, minutes can save a life.

McNamara tells us, he’s currently looking to break his 90-foot wave record with the new suit — hunting down a 120-footer in Nazare, Portugal … where the biggest waves in the world break.

McNamara says he uses military-grade wave-tracking technology to follow the swells — the same tech used by the Navy.

He even has a private jet at his disposal — to make the 5-hour flight from Miami to Nazare at a moment’s notice.

We asked McNamara how he knows he’ll survive — he simply replied, “I don’t.”

Credits:
Read More @:
http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/30/garrett-mcnamara-big-wave-wetsuit/#.TycbOlxSQ2A
http://www.webpronews.com/garrett-mcnamara-i-have-underwater-superpowers-2012-01

Check out some photos of Garrett McNamara at the Jaws paddling session with his WaveJet board. It was great day of surfing, as a brutal Pacific swell headed to the archipelago.

Greg Long, Ian Walsh, Kohl Christensen, Jeff Rowley, Dave Wassel, Shane Dorian, Mark Healey, Carlos Burle, Nate Fletcher, Garrett McNamara, Kai Barger, North Shore locals and young guns.

The best big wave surfers in the world invaded the Hawaiian Islands for an historical day of surfing, as a brutal Pacific swell headed to the archipelago.

Jaws, the infamous Peahi peak, looked like a Hollywood movie set, ready for action. Cameras, surf photographers, videographers and helicopters. The rule was simple: it was huge and no tow-in surfing.

There were 50-foot wave bombs coming in, great rides and spectacular wipe-outs. The young guns were testing their fears and the most experienced big wave surfers tried to keep the leading posture.

In Jaws, it was crazy, but Waimea Bay also sent reports of massive waves and crowded surf peaks. Big names in world surfing were riding multiple peaks, while it lasted. Outer reefs and other exposed Hawaiian surf spots were explored by the local and international surf crew.

The XXL wave moments were insane and dangerous. Watch the best moments of the historic Jaws paddle in session:

Credits: http://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/6699-jaws-sees-paddle-in-surf-madness

THE WAVE HAS NO IDEA it’s famous: a 90-foot wall of water that, one day in November, rose out of an underwater canyon at Praia do Norte, near the tiny fishing village of Nazare, Portugal. So easily that rogue might have come and gone, this transient giant, just another one of the countless waves that roll onto our shores, one after another. Instead, a 44-year-old big wave pro named Garrett McNamara somehow survived surfing it — catching it just in time, the only wave he would surf that day — and that Portuguese monster became the biggest wave ever surfed. It became a very particular one of the countless. More than four million people have clicked onto the footage on YouTube; they’ve sat at their desks, on their couches and in their beds and marveled, watching McNamara do this seemingly impossible, beautiful thing.

This story appears in the Dec. 26 “Year in Sports” issue of ESPN The Magazine.

“I didn’t realize how big it was at first,” McNamara says, speaking from his home in Hawaii mostly in the present tense, as though he’s never left the face of that wave. “I hardly ever look back, but this time I look back, two or three times as the wave starts to grow. It’s like this endless mountain. Every second is so crucial just then.”

Every second is so crucial because waves do two very different things — they build and they crash — presenting two distinct possibilities for the people who ride them. “You can go very quickly from heaven and find yourself in hell” is how McNamara puts it. Before he surfed Praia do Norte, he sat on the cliff overlooking the waves and felt their power in his chest. It made him wonder. He e-mailed his friend Kelly Slater, arguably the greatest surfer in the history of the world, about the break and its range of possibility. Slater had once sat on the same cliff and felt the same things in his chest. One mistake will be your last, he wrote. McNamara has seen friends come out of waves like that with their legs dangling by just a flap of skin, with their shoulders pulled out of joint. Rogues can rip your head clean off.

But McNamara has seen waves perform miracles too. For years, he has taken autistic children into the ocean at camps across the country. Autism and its causes remain mostly a mystery, but affected children can seem as though they’ve been locked in a box — as though the world is too much, too awful, for them to take in, and so they shut themselves down rather than risk going under for good. Until for some of them, at least, they feel their first wave. McNamara has heard the first words a child has spoken. He has seen the first smile. The waves somehow unlock certain kids, and the kids, in turn, take McNamara to places that even rogues can’t deliver him.

“It’s the hardest and easiest and best and worst thing I do in my life,” he says. “But it’s like proof that there’s no such thing as a maximum, as long as the wave doesn’t pass you by.”

And so McNamara climbed down from the cliff, and he went into the water at Praia do Norte. A spotter on the shore radioed that a massive set was building, and McNamara strapped himself to his six-foot board and was hurriedly towed by a friend on a Jet Ski and dropped onto the shoulder of what would become his record-breaking wave. The moment he let go of the rope, there were only two possible paths: heaven or hell.

“I’m concentrating so hard,” he remembers. “As I get to the bottom, I look up, and I turn up into it when it starts to break. It lands right on my shoulders from above. It was like the hand of God just smacked me so hard on my shoulders. Then an explosion comes from all directions. I just brace myself; I see myself making it out. I made up my mind that it wasn’t going to push me off the board. And it just squirts me out. Everything was perfect. The whole ride was perfect. I, um …”

Just then McNamara trails off, and he’s quiet for a moment. “I’m kind of at a loss for words,” he says.

Sometimes the waves make language obsolete. Sometimes they give it back as a gift. They do different things to different people, and it’s hard to know what, exactly, they’ll do to you until you decide to go into the water. But they’re out there. Right now they’re out there waiting, each one a door to impossibility, so many millions of locks, so many millions of keys.

Chris Jones is a columnist for ESPN The Magazine. Follow The Mag on Twitter, @ESPNmag, and like us on Facebook.

Credits: http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7349271/surfer-garrett-mcnamara-riding-biggest-wave-ever-espn-magazine
Illustration by Andrew Archer

Here are some pics and a video of Garrett @ the North Shore.

Before he snapped his WaveJet, Gmac was in a very festive mood. Photo: Jeremiah Klein. Video: Marc Beaty

Garrett MacNamara has been making short work of his WaveJet surfboards over the last week or so. This OTW closeout chewed up this particular watercraft. “Everyone in the lineup was cheering when he came up,” smiled Jesse Merle-Jones. Photo: Marc Beaty

Credits: http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/north-shore-swell-update_63803/

WAIMEA BAY, HAWAII – (Dec. 1, 2011) – It’s a rare international sporting event that can have no set date, be held just eight times in a span of 27 years, and still gain strength. But the lifeblood of the big wave Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau lies in what one man’s life represented: the best that surfing and Hawaii have to offer the world.

The story of Eddie Aikau, a Hawaiian hero who saved and inspired lives as Waimea Bay’s resident lifeguard and big wave charger, continues to touch generations. It’s a story that is told anew each December, when the opening ceremony for the event in his honor takes place on Oahu’s North Shore, as it did today.

The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau is a one-day big wave surfing event that only runs when, and if, waves at Waimea Bay reach a minimum height of 20 feet. It was last held in December of 2009. It is a tribute to Aikau, who rode the mountainous waves of Waimea Bay in the late ’60s and early ’70s and saved lives as its first full-time lifeguard. He was lost at sea in 1978, west of the Hawaiian Islands during a voyage of the Polynesian sailing canoe, Hokule’a. Hokule’a capsized in heavy seas, stranding her crew. Eddie insisted upon paddling for land to get help, but was never seen again.

“There will be waves,” said Hawaiian kahu (priest) Billy Mitchell, in a voice that traveled to the far reaches of the bay. “But those of you here today know that this is about much more than that.

“Eddie had a passion. He had a passion about living and loving the ocean. Whether you surf or you don’t surf, you are drawn to people like Eddie in life. People with big mana (spirit). We have to remember, and we cannot forget, someone who lived this way. Eddie never left people behind. It was his way. We need that in this life, especially now. It’s a way to surf; it’s a way to live.

“This event is Eddie’s story, and it is a ripple in the ocean to travel around the world.”

Source: http://quiksilverlive.com/eddieaikau/2012/blog,197,eddie.en.html

Wavejet will be premiering The North Canyon movie at the new Surfer Mag bar (Turtle Bay Resort) on December 10th 2011. The awesome thing is all proceeds go to Surfers Healing. Hope to see you all there.

Article from Surfing Magazine dated 11/26/2011 (http://www.surfingmagazine.com/blogs/out-of-office-reply-g-money/).

If Greg Long or Mark Healey or Twiggy had ridden the wave that Garrett McNamara rode in Portugal a couple of weeks ago, we’d all be dancing. Throwing buckets of icy Gatorade over his head. Congratulating him — no, thanking him — for “showing us once again that there are still waves to be discovered out there, and people with the balls to go find them.”

But instead we brushed him. Why? Because we, the surf world, were not involved. Because instead of seeing it on SURFING or Surfline we saw it on youtube (with over a million views) and on ESPN (“Down in Portugal Garrett was towed into a rogue wave…”) and in the Posts (Washington and Huffington). We saw it where we get our news news, not our surf news. So we wrote it off. And who measured it, anyway?

We dismissed it because it’s Garrett McNamara, as much a cowboy as a legitimate big-wave surfer. Shouldn’t he be surfing a glacier wave or paddling into Maverick’s on a GoPro-laden SUP?

And we ignored it because Garrett, or somebody in his camp, claimed it. Ninety feet. World record. And that doesn’t sit well with us because it breaks the surfer’s code, which clearly states that we must let our surfing do the talking and appreciate whatever recognition may come of it. Be quiet, be humble. Claim a wave to be half the size it actually was.

Garrett joins other code breakers with his Portuguese feat. Like Mark Visser, who surfs Jaws at night and jumps out of airplanes on Jet Skis. Never mind that he’s leaping into a flat ocean, his efforts earn him the cover of Spirit, Southwest’s in-flight magazine. And the original dissenter, Laird Hamilton, has successfully skirted the surf world and now Laird is American Express. Laird is The Wave. Laird is Vogue. Laird is Men’s Journal. Laird is kind of arrogant.

My first instinct is to hate. In fact, an earlier version of this post took the tone of most of this site’s commenters. I resented that the people who I consider to be the best in the sport — guys like Healey, Greg and Dorian, who paddle into big waves and are humble in their accomplishments — get overshadowed by people who are whipping into waves and puffing their chests. Because besides Kelly Slater, these guys are surfing’s ambassadors to the real world, and I don’t think they represent us accurately.

But.

If you talk to most professional big-wave surfers, the ones working sponsorship deals with alcohol companies and pitching movies and TV shows to surf-hungry suits, the real world is where they want to be. It’s where the money is. The surf world is too preoccupied with contests and airs to put stickers on guns, so they seek a mainstream audience that understands the most basic allure of what they do: tall wave, small person. Which is where Garrett, Laird and Mark are winning. Sure, they’re doing it with Jet Skis, but Jane in Kansas isn’t going, “Pfff, pussies shoulda paddled it.” She doesn’t care. Hell, we didn’t care for a solid decade there. So maybe it takes some cowboys towing in and making claims to shock-and-awe Middle America and draw its attention (and precious dollars) into the sport. And then, when they become tired of the tow, those who are paddling in, our heroes, can enter the picture for fame, fortune and darlings. And isn’t that what surfing’s all about? So with that in mind I hate no more. I now say Yeehaw! Get ‘em boys! And Garrett — congrats on your 95-foot wave.

Garrett McNamara breaks the world record for the largest wave ever surfed. Garrett was towed into a rogue wave in Portugal, at the North Canyon – 90ft (30 yards of wave). Impressive. Check out the massive wave by clicking on the video below, presented by ESPN.

Garrett McNamara makes history again by breaking the current record of the biggest wave ever surfed. The wave came during the two month period of the ZON North Canyon Show 2011, with a height of around 90 feet.

The first ever North Canyon Tow In Trials presented by Wavejet will take place in Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal. The waiting period will be from the 2nd to 28th of November 2011. The winning team will secure a spot in an international Tow In competition in 2012, being the first of its kind in Portugal.

Ramon Laureano and António Silva (Portugal), Al Mennie and Andrew Cotton (Ireland/UK), Axi Muniain and Jerome Sahyoun (Basque Country/Morocco), Yuri Soledade and Sebastian Steudtner (Brazil/Germany), Benjamin Sanchez and Eric Rebiere (France) and Will and Cliff Skudin (NYC/USA) are the teams invited.

All of the participants are experienced big wave riders, recognized for seeking and surfing big waves all over the world. Two of whom have won the Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards, in the “Biggest Wave” category (the French Benjamin Sanchez and the German Sebastian Steudtner).

The international big wave competition, that will take place in 2012 at Praia do Norte, is the pinnacle of a three year project, initiated last year with the project The North Canyon Show by Garrett McNamara. Only a select few of the worlds best teams will be invited to this ground breaking event for Portugal.

Garrett McNamara will be the host. “After exploring Praia Do Norte, I found it to be the most challenging location I have experienced. I am honored to be the host and so excited to see my friends surf here. We are very thankful that ZON, Red Bull and Wavejet are supporting this project”, said Garrett.

ZON North Canyon Show 2011
Garrett McNamara is back in Portugal to embark on another mission exploring the waves of Nazaré, in the ZON North Canyon Show 2011. This is the second mission of a three years project, initiated last year. This is a Nazaré City Hall and ZON project to internationally promote the region as a destination for surfing, show casing the unique aspects of the “Nazaré Canyon”.

The “Nazaré Canyon” is a rare geographical phenomenon, the biggest in Europe and one of the largest in the world, which can be explained as a gap on the continental plate with 170 kilometers of length and 5 kilometers of depth. The “Nazaré Canyon”, that is located right in front of Praia do Norte, receives the swells from the Atlantic Ocean and creates waves with abnormal size, compared to the rest of the Portuguese coast.

To follow all the developments of the ZON North Canyon Show 2011 visit the official website: www.praiadonorte.com.pt. The event can also be found in the social networks: Facebook (www.facebook.com/northcanyonproject) and Twitter (twitter.com/nazare_pnorte).