It’s one thing to commit yourself to a particular wave, it’s another to commit to the most tempestuous beachbreak on Earth. Vinicius dos Santos was born in Florianópolis, Brazil, but now calls Nazaré home. Unlike most surfers who flock to the wave every winter, dos Santos first opted to try the wave by hand.
“In the first three years I could only paddle,” he wrote on social media. “Little by little I met the Nazaré crew and I got a few opportunities to go tow-in with some of the top surfers including (Lucas) Chumbo and (Rodrigo) Koxa. I’m grateful to the people who supported my surf journey. I’m truly a soul surfer and I got all the way here moved by passion for the ocean.”
Wielding a gun between those shifty peaks is demanding to say the least. But in 2021 he received two nominations for Biggest Paddle and Ride of the Year in the Red Bull Big Wave Awards for landing this ludicrous airdrop from Nazaré’s apex.
Dos Santos’s comfort in the wave can in part be traced to being a lifeguard at Joaquina Beach in Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina. But spending water time at Nazaré is inherent with risk, and dos Santos has taken numerous beatings over the years. On one nasty fall, his board smacked him in the head, resulting in 27 stitches on the dome. And yet somehow he managed to ride the biggest wave of his life 12 days later. That wave was entered in the inaugural Big Wave Challenge in 2023.
His trials and tribulations were shown in the documentary Vinicius, which played in Ericeira’s Portuguese Surf Film Festival and the Noosa Surf Film Festival.