“It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life,” said American surfer CJ Macias in an interview with magicseaweed in which he remembers everything that happened last Saturday in Nazaré, which caused him to faint on the beach after being catapulted by the lip of a giant wave and fracturing his arm.

He says that after catching a few waves and gaining confidence, he was ready to go for a bomb, but “unfortunately,” he didn’t get into the wave fast enough to get into the tube and knew he was going to have to go straight down.

He felt confident that he could withstand what was coming and make the bottom to complete the wave. But Nazaré had another plan: “It was one of the wildest things in my life (…) I felt the foam trying to catch me, I thought I was breaking bigger, but in the films it looks impressive. The lip falls on top of me. I was so determined to do it that I leaned back and touched the water with my hands. Afterwards I was still convinced that I would do it (…) Then he let me out! I thought I would make it, yeah, right… I was going so fast and blinded by the foam. When I could see again I tried to orient myself and the front arm crossed my line and, boom! I was pushed onto my right shoulder. I knew I was in a bad place. Without thinking, I put my right arm out to break the fall, that's what you see in the photo of the wipeout. It almost cost me my arm.”

Asked about what happened underwater, Macias said he couldn’t breathe before the foam covered him and that he had to “relax and give up.” He said the blow was violent and took him deep. The vest he was wearing inflated on its own and he said he wouldn’t have been able to do it. “It took a while until I felt still again and I had no idea which way up was so I just let the buoyancy take me up. It took a while. At this point my ears were screaming from the pressure and I was starting to feel like something wasn’t right with my arm, it hurt a lot. I finally got to the surface and tried to see where the next wave was coming from, I looked to one side, I looked to the other and, boom! I took a little half breath and round 2 started.”

This second round lasted a long time, says the surfer, who says that underwater he noticed that his right arm was loose and that he couldn't grab it because it was moving on the other side of his body as if it were a "wet noodle." The wetsuit kept it next to his body. "It was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life," he said.

“I was happy to know that I would return to the surface, conscious or not,” he added.

He then had time to catch his breath for the third round. He managed to secure his broken arm with his other hand and, almost unconscious, received another beating.

When he surfaced, the first rescuer arrived with Alemao from Maresias, but he was unable to secure him on the ski because he had no hands. Another round of waves came and left him on the beach.

He tried to walk and saw, deliriously, that people were coming to help him, running through the sand. “I surrendered to the peace of mind of knowing that I was alive, knowing that I was no longer alone. I knew I had help.”

Macias was taken to the hospital; the final diagnosis was that he had suffered an open fracture in his right arm, a “slightly” injured ear and pain in his neck. “I feel blessed to be able to get through this experience,” he wrote on Instagram.