Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to The MOST Dangerous and Heaviest Waves in Australia" video.
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Use the person/surfer scale at 6 ft just under 2m and the big waves go from 3 to over 5 times the person's height. So to 30 ft 10m or a bit above.
I have mainly stayed under 2m waves so gentle by comparison, but have been caught by 5m, so around 15 ft waves, as typically there are occasional waves going over normally high. I only ever had one surf board bought at an auction. A total waste, as it was a Balsa wood core covered by a fibreglass skin, some 2.7 m long. Way too heavy and very difficult to paddle out through breaking waves. I think it was never paddled past 2m waves mostly 1m was the limit, as it was heavy so hard to build speed between waves and beaten back hard by wave action. Mostly I body surfed the waves meaning no board at all, swim out into the surf, and on approaching wave start swimming hard, and keeping body stiff as you end up on the waveface go skimming on the surface faster and sweeping over the front of the wave, often almost to shore. Often the breaking wave would dump you, much as the surfers through the air and diving into the bubbling wash. You can be driven down deep by the crashing wave, ending many meters down below the swirling rolling wave. Better be good at holding breath and able to reorient towards the surface. Holding breath can be VERY hard as the pummelling of the crashing down wave can hit hard enough to knock the breath from you. There can be risk of drowning if your diving ability is limited. At all times strong swimming and extreme awareness for rip tide effects is essential. The water driven inwards by waves typically moves along the beach forming sizeable outward directed flow, that can take people far out into deep water, in fact one of the main causes of ocean drownings. On patrolled beaches the life guards assess these rips and changes during the day marking safer swimming areas by flags, and dangerous strong rips by red flags. Insistence on swimming only in safe areas. But at all times soend a lot of time watching for swimmers entering the critical rip area, and especially fir people getting into trouble in these rips.
Getting driven down by breaking waves risks also being hard driven into the sand bottom or worse rocks under water again can cause fatal injuries.
Smaller waves are less an issue, infact surf is really only fun for 2m or more waves. Also common sights are quite large fish porpoises and sharks to be seen swimming inside the waves. The latter, sharks, hopefully not at all.
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