Dawnee Kanjanapas: Making Waves, Changing Tides

From discovering wakesurfing during the COVID-19 pandemic to becoming Hong Kong's first world wakesurf champion, Dawnee Kanjanapas radiates unstoppable energy: conquering waves in 10+ countries, claiming global titles, and coaching other riders—all while balancing a thriving eyewear career.

Dawnee is stuck at a crossroad: she enjoys her newfound career in eyewear but also adores time on her board – a time-consuming and expensive sport that she must practice regularly to retain "the feel of the water."

"There are no shortcuts to wakesurfing: you have to practice; there must be tricks that I've done more than 2000 times by now. If I skip training for a week, I'd be making rookie mistakes again," she says. "I am trying to find a balance between my job and the sport: there's no real solution yet," laments the Emanate Category winner of the 2025 JESSICA Most Successful Women Awards.

A watersport that involves using a surf or skim-style board to ride the wake produced behind a wakeboat, wakesurfing – unlike wakeboarding – doesn't strap the rider to the board.

Having been a proud beneficiary of notable brands like Asia Yachting, Oakley HK, Nautique, and more, Dawnee has taken home trophies at the Asian WakeSurfing Championship; Taipei Wake Open; Chinese National Waterski Championships; and Wakefests in Bangkok, ShiJiaZhuang, Singapore, Hong Kong, HaiKou, and Switzerland, among others. Most impressively, she became the first Hong Kong rider to win a world champion title in a Open/Pro division setting, securing the Open Women Surf category at the inaugural World Wakesurf Championships in 2024. This victory not only crowned her the Wake Surf Female Rider of the Year by the International Waterski and Wakeboard Federation, but also swayed Dawnee from hanging up her board for her office job.

Got Onboard

Wakesurfing was a serendipitous fruit of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Dawnee returned to Hong Kong amidst Year 3 of her commerce major at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Hungry for a breath of unmasked, fresh air, she took on a friend's invitation in June 2020 to learn wakesurfing, curious about its novelty. She only managed to let go of the rope in her third lesson.

But soon, she found herself in the passenger seat of her mom's car at 5:30 a.m., cruising to the pier to catch the calmest waters at 6. She was especially captivated by wakesurfing's obsession with minute details and the multiple paths a rider can take to master a trick: there is no "best," just "different."

Making Waves

In 2021, Dawnee put her name in for her first international online competition – the only kind available at the time, as live competitions were on hold due to the pandemic.

"It was hell," says Dawnee, describing the grueling month of striving for a perfect run that doesn't exist and nitpicking at every pump, stance, and hang during training sessions that would sometimes drag to almost three hours long.

The biggest advantage to such repetition – however exhausting – is gaining consistency, a skill especially essential for live competitions that normally run from now until November. While off-season practice allows her freedom to put on a creative cap and take on new tricks, training for competition is about ensuring all five judging criteria – Difficulty, Risk, Intensity, Variety, and Execution (DRIVE) – are well-covered. She fine-tunes this composition over and over again.

"It's very robotic: if you screw up on one detail, you need to do the whole routine again," Dawnee says.

Like the submissions for online wakesurfing competitions, drills on-repeat grind the moves into riders' muscle memory; but Dawnee says experience in making split-second decisions is what determines a make or break. She deems the 1.5-minute competition more exhausting than any form of body workout she's done. Wakesurfing, therefore, is as much a mental game as it is a physical one.

Drawing from her competitive experience, Dawnee often mentors newer and existing riders, helping them develop their competitive mindset and design their runs to maximize impact. But with so many competitions under her belt, Dawnee can turn on her razor-sharp focus like a light switch. She says her trick is to concentrate on a single point on her board right before her turn.

"The second I do that, it all pulls together; and I know I'm in focus. I am not telling you where on the board that is though, I can, but I won't," she laughs.

Despite her quick ascension to acclaim, the inherent humility in the sport has kept her grounded. For one, she never goes into a race expecting to win; instead, she strives to top personal bests, whether it's performing a move she's been perfecting or pulling off a new trick she's never showcased in competition before.

Albeit nursing a sore back, Dawnee was first runner-up in the Open Women Wake Surf at the 2025 Hong Kong National Wakesurf Championship on the last weekend of April.

"For now, I am just going with the flow and finding balance within my personal wakesurf journey, while working on ways to promote this sport so it grows in the right direction," she says.

"Letting my achievements get to my head is not going to do me any good... I am human at the end of the day, so I can't win every time. Doing my best and enjoying the process matters to me more."