Daniel Emslie does not wipe out often. His make rate is very high. He is just that good.
The East London local started his tough semifinal at the recent Vic Bay Quad surf contest at Victoria Bay, near George, with a 9.33 ride against top surfer Max Elkington and last year’s winner, Logan Tilsley.
This quadrangular is one of SA’s most iconic and longest-running surfing events, held each year in memory of respected surfing legend John Pfaff.
Victoria Bay stood up on its hind legs and bellowed. The surf was huge, as it so often is at the break.
The ladies’ divisions were postponed, and the open men were sent out.
Daniel took off on his second wave, an eight- to 10-foot foamie, and he bungled the takeoff and went down like a ton of bricks for an underwater tour of the crayfish regions.
By the time he came up, he was way across the bay and heading for the cliffs on the other side.
An even bigger wave was behind the wave that Daniel wiped out on, and he took it on the head.
The wave hit him so hard that he was slammed onto the sand at the bottom in deep water, and his leash snapped.
He came up without a board and was now swimming through about a 10-wave set, heading for the cliffs on the east side of Victoria Bay and getting ripped out to sea in the outgoing cross current.
No jetski, no safety; Daniel knew he was on his own.
Get a breath, dive under the next wave, get hammered, come up, repeat.
Tough expert local surfers Sean Holmes and Shaun Joubert were watching the scene play out and were thinking about big trouble unfolding, hovering over their phones and about to dial the NSRI.
“This was the closest I have ever been to dying in my life,” Daniel told me.
“I train a lot. I am fit and it was unbelievably scary.”
In all honesty, he was swimming for his life, and throwing the kitchen sink at it.
Finally, the sets backed off, and he was only just able to make it to the back line of the beach break where he swam into Ceara Knight from Western Province.
She was having a free surf on the beach break.
Daniel knew Ceara from an ISA world championships tour a few years ago when they were on the same team.
Taking one look at him and his predicament, the young lady offered: “Do you need my board?”
“Yes, please,” was his desperate reply.
She calmly took off her leash, gave him the board, and swam home in a classic girl-rescues-boy fairytale.
Daniel turned and paddled back out to sea on the severely under-buoyant 5’5” twin fin.
He only needed a miserable one-point ride to advance to the finals on a very wrong board for the type of surfing conditions.
A tiny twin fin is not designed for a giant, chunky, wild point break.
With moments left in the heat, Daniel found a small wave in among the chaos and made the best two-point ride in his life to advance to the final the next day.
Exiting the water after the semifinal, Daniel had a bad case of the shakes.
“I have a newfound respect for Victoria Bay,” he said.
Daniel was deeply thankful on the day of the finals to see that the surf had dropped off to a far more manageable size.
He was still trying to process his near-death experience when he posted solid surfing to win the open division final.
As an aside, this writer must tell of friend Peter Haaroff who suffered the same fate as Daniel at Victoria Bay.
Pete was slammed up the cliffs on the east side of the bay and he hung on to the rocks at the top of the surge like a gully crab.
When the water pulled back, he scampered up the cliff like a spider and walked home along the railway line.
Twice!
Friends begged him to stop surfing big Victoria Bay.
This Sunday Daniel leaves for KwaZulu-Natal to surf the first event in the World Surf League’s Challenger Series — the Ballito Pro, which runs from July 12-18.
Straight after that he flies to the second event in the series, the US Open of Surfing in Huntingdon.
From that, back to Cape Town for the SA Open Surfing Championships (perhaps he owes Ceara a big cup of coffee and a huge vote of thanks when he gets there).
From Cape Town, he is off to the third World Surf League’s Challenger Series event in Brazil and from there to the Portugal event.
During all of this, he is also busy with his fourth-year university studies to complete his BCom Financial Planning degree. He will be back home in November.
A mere 15 months ago, Daniel destroyed his shoulder in a surfing wipeout and was told by the surgeon that it was probably the end of his career.
“I would rather be too busy than have nothing going on,” he says, laughing.
Salute modern medical science and Ceara Knight.
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