Last year Garrett McNamara, a Hawaiian surfer who reportedly has a home in L.A., set the Guinness World record for biggest wave ever ridden after he was towed into a 78-foot face at Cortes Bank off the coast of San Diego.

This week McNamara topped himself and gave biggest-wave bragging rights to … Portugal? Yes, Portugal.

Here's Garrett:

The ride happened Monday at Nazare, Portugal. McNamara was “towed in” via jet-ski. (Waves that big are virtually impossible to “paddle into,” although there is a school of surfing that respects the old way).

Reports are estimating that the wave in question has a 100-foot face.

However, Pat Caldwell, a friend of McNamara's and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer, told U.S. News & World Report he thinks the wave is more like a 60-footer.

(This photo makes the wave seem bigger than that, however).

While the biggest waves in the world have found homes at Maverick's near Half Moon Bay, Oahu's North Shore, Cortes Bank and Todos Santos island off Baja, Nazare is for real.

Portuguese oceanographer Joao Vitorino explained it to U.S. News:

It's a complex region with a submarine canyon–when waves propagate over the canyon at different speeds, they start to converge near the shore. This increases the height of waves in the area.

So was it a record-breaker? We're waiting for Guinness World Records to weigh in.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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