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Posted on Thursday December 29th 2011 at 8:44 a.m.
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Al Mennie on a Euro bomb
'This is my mission. Good days are few and far between - 90% of the swells are unrideable and we reckon only two days each year are rideable,' says Mennie. ' 'We've been out and ridden them. They weren't enormous but we are waiting for the right conditions.'
Mennie from Portrush in Northern Ireland, and his right-hand man Andrew Cotton, from Devon, have not disclosed the exact locations of the waves. One wave is off the west coast of Donegal and the other off Co Antrim. Both crash down on rocky reefs and Mennie claims the water could be as shallow as five feet when the waves are sucked up.
'Because of the very specific bottom contours on the seabed and the weather, that makes these waves, we have to understand how the whole place works for safety - what happens if something goes wrong, access, getting to hospital. A number of these waves that we have around the country could be the biggest in the world. There's no doubt about that at all, 100%. It depends on the storms coming across the Atlantic.'
Mennie surfed Mavericks in 2003, Aileen's below the Cliffs of Moher, and was part of a team taking on 90ft waves earlier this year off Portugal.
'I looked for the same characteristics in Ireland as in the US and Hawaii and now we've found waves in Ireland bigger and better. The tables have turned, We are doing the same as Hawaii but they're in board shorts and sun cream. This is the extreme. We're wearing six millimetre-thick wetsuits in water 10C and near freezing air temperatures.' Read more