Guiness Book of World Records officials have confirmed it, the wave that surfer Garrett McNamara surfed in November of last year was the tallest ever ridden, clocking in at 78 feet tall, a foot taller than the previous record, which was set in 2008. McNamara, 44, was surfing off the shore of Nazare, Portugal with a group of friends and said that he hadn’t even planned on riding his board that day.

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“They talked me into getting on my board,” McNamara told U.K. paper The Telegraph. “When I got on the board and they pulled me up with tow rope everything just felt right, it was like magic.”

The wave, which McNamara described as an “endless mountain” of water, seemed big at the time, but the professional board-rider didn’t know he had set a world record until officials contacted him yesterday.

Watch video of McNamara’s historic ride, embedded via YouTube, below: