It's the wave that won him $20,000, but West Australian surfer Mick Corbett didn't even see it coming.
Corbett was awarded the main prize for ride of the year at Wednesday night's Big Wave gala dinner in Sydney, a fitting reward for beating the 40-foot monster he caught on WA break The Right last summer.
But the Perth surfer admits he had no idea just how magical the wave until he was halfway through riding it.
"It was pretty funny, my tow partner Jarryd (Foster) just turned around and said `don't even look at it'," Corbett told AAP.
"It was pretty sick, it was probably the biggest wave I've ever ridden out there."
Corbett was a runner-up for last year's prize, but he says it took a while for the enormity of the June ride to set in.
"I sort of get blase about things when I get back in," he said.
"When I look at waves they don't look that big on camera, but I tell you what they're a whole lot bigger out there when you're riding through them and see them with your own eyes."
Corbett hopes his first major gong can lead to even wider acclaim when he heads to one of the northern hemisphere's best breaks at Nazare in Portugal at the end of the year.
He has already already attracted interest from the Nine Network about a potential documentary and wants to do a number of projects to take his big-wave riding to the world.
"There's not a lot of big-wave surfers in Western Australia and most of the ones who are there just don't leave.
"So I think if you're getting big waves elsewhere the public loves that."
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