Second place for Al at North Canyon Tow

The invitation only event, due to the danger, saw competiors from Portugal, France, Spain and The Basque Country compete against Al and Andrew at the now famous Praia do Norte in Nazare, Portugal. The two man teams utilised high powered jet skis to hurl each other onto 40 foot monster waves. Al said: ‘We dominated all the way through the rounds. We both rode some really big waves and even got a couple of big scary tubes,” he said. “We felt in really good form. Conditions were difficult. It wasn’t the biggest we had ever surfed at Nazare by a long way but it was definitely challenging as the surface was bumpy due to high winds the day before making it difficult to ride. “In the final our luck ran out and we struggled to be in the right place at the right time when the biggest waves came in. That gave the Basque team the chance to take the win in the dying moments. “It felt like our best contest performance to date however, in the final, things just didn’t go our way and our lead slipped from us in tricky conditions.” The duo finished 10th in the world in big wave tow in surfing in 2008 which may seem like an unlikely feat for two UK and Irish surfers. Al and Andrew were part of the three man team that recently hit international headlines while they tackled the biggest waves in the world at the same spot of Praia do Norte, Nazare when 60-90 foot waves were ridden. Al and Andrew will appear later this year in another invitational big wave event of the coast of Santander in North Spain. La Vaca Gigante is a competition with a different form of big wave surfing where the guys will use only human paddle power to catch giant waves.