One cubic yard of water weighs 1,685.55492 pounds: Over three-quarters of a ton.
According to the caption, this last photo is of a surfer riding the largest wave ever successfully negotiated without wiping out. It’s over seventy feet tall. If you assume for the purposes of estimation that the wave is perfectly triangular, and that the base is also seventy feet (It’s actually much longer, of course), that comes out to 5,353,197.57 pounds of water he’s riding on: Over 2,676 tons.
That’s just a fuck-load of water.
The Tizona Group 
January 13, 2008, 3:42 pm at 3:42 pm
Thanks Angus. Not only do I have to worry about swallowing shark pee, I know have to worry about the hundreds (or thousands!) of tons of water under me.
Surfing will never be the same.
January 13, 2008, 3:43 pm at 3:43 pm
Puts to shame those little two- and three-foot breakers I saw in Florida.
I also learned recently that on some very large extra-solar planets, water can become so dense, because of gravity, that it solidifies like ice, even though it’s not frozen.
January 13, 2008, 4:20 pm at 4:20 pm
Angus,
Love the post. Love the photos. Love the water, as long as it is covered by something called a boat, ship or aircraft carrier…:).
Rebecca H,
You must speak of Jello®…lol.
January 13, 2008, 5:37 pm at 5:37 pm
Oooooh! Great idea Rebecca! I’ll do a post on mass and gravity at some point.
Tiz, I do not surf, but love watching people who do. The same goes for dancing.
And, my favorite boats are those set up for FISHING! Put me on a 48-foot Hatteras yacht with a fishing transom off of Cabo San Lucas, and I’m in heaven. When I was a kid we lived in Panama and had a nice fishing boat. Dad and I spent every spare minute fishing. He even took me out of school to fish a few times when the sailfish were particularly numerous!
January 13, 2008, 7:20 pm at 7:20 pm
Absolutely fantastic photos!
January 13, 2008, 10:25 pm at 10:25 pm
Scotch
JMH
January 13, 2008, 11:52 pm at 11:52 pm
Wow. And I thought our surf in Margaret River and the South Coast was pretty good. We call waves there “big” when they’re 20 foot or so; that’d be like a ripple for those blokes in your pictures! I love the ocean, too. Except for a 2-year stint in Mount Isa, I’ve never in my whole life lived somewhere where I can’t see the sea; it’s essential to me. Brilliant photos, brilliant post.
January 14, 2008, 12:13 am at 12:13 am
You ain’t got nothin’ on Bells Beach over there in the West Spot!
January 14, 2008, 2:24 am at 2:24 am
Bells, schmells. With Margaret River, you can spend the morning surfing and the afternoon touring the wineries. /state rivalry off (actually, I’ve driven the coast road in VIC and spent a weekend in Torquay, and it was lovely.)
Heaps and heaps of Aussie surf-cams!
January 14, 2008, 2:47 am at 2:47 am
Spot, there are tons of things to tour off Bells too!
Don’t ignore us little peoples!
January 14, 2008, 5:03 am at 5:03 am
I worked on a fishing and diving boat in the Florida Keys to help pay my way through school. Loved it. But … BUT … give me a sailboat any day. In fact, I live on a sailboat.
I always lived on the water until my dad died and we had to move back to the states. To Oklahoma. There’s no salt water in Oklahoma. It was traumatic. As soon as I was of age, and I had to choose a college, I moved to Miami. When I wasn’t working one of my two jobs, or going to school, I was sailing.
January 14, 2008, 5:06 am at 5:06 am
Terrific pictures, by the bye. I’ll have to show them to my husband, who was one of 4 boys to surf, even in the winter, in Long Island Sound when he was a kid. He moved to San Diego after he mustered out of the service just so he could surf. He even did a little professional surfing. His knee finally broke good and proper and he couldn’t stand the pressure on it. He still loves to watch, and he has a boyhood friend who taught in PR just so he could surf, as he does to this day.
January 14, 2008, 5:08 am at 5:08 am
Salty, about an hour (tops) from my place, is Phillip Island. It’s an island which is almost all for surfing, except the beach that looks into Port Phillip Bay, which has no waves and is so for small children to swim. It’s brilliant.
Let me know when you’re all coming to Melbourne!
February 14, 2008, 3:38 am at 3:38 am
[…] so 14 metres is just a baby wave compared to the waves Angus Dei featured here… but it’s still a hell of a lot bigger than anything I’ve ever tried! And, Alfy’s […]
September 24, 2010, 11:48 pm at 11:48 pm
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