Napier gets big thumbs-up after offshore race

Sports class boat Fury for the high jump during the Napier powerboat racing at the weekend. The mainly Auckland-region fleet rate Napier their favourite and will be back to make it better, after only a small number took part. Photo / Lester Oliver

The New Zealand Offshore Power Boat Association has vowed Napier will stay a part of its annual championship despite low numbers at recent races.

Napier hosted the third leg of the association’s national championship on January 24 and 25.

Seven boats started which was possibly the smallest number ever in the race that was first held more than a half-century ago.

Fields have exceeded 30 boats across a range of classes in the event’s heyday, including 40ft (12m) catamarans from Australia.

It has at times been called the only “true” offshore race in the series, with most others over the years raced in harbour, firth or lake settings.

The sport has suffered through economic times, with numerous boats “parked-up in garages and yards all over Auckland”, as one race has put it in the past.

But the association backed Napier again as a venue for the mainly northern-regions fleet, making it the only two-day stop during the five legs of the 2025-2026 championship.

The association’s vice-president Owen Mackay, who took part, said: “Napier is our favourite venue.”

Former association president Paul Greenfield echoed Mackay by praising the venue as “great”.

A post by the association on social media said: “We feel so incredibly grateful for the Napier community. One of our absolute favourite things is when the public gets behind what we do, and Napier never fails to deliver.

“Even though we were low on boats and dealing with plenty of changes, it was Ahuriri and its amazing patrons who really pulled us through.”

Greenfield said there were at least four craft that decided against heading for Napier because of early weather forecasts predicting heavy rain that caused calamities in Gisborne and Bay of Plenty.

As it happened, conditions saw January 24’s racing cut back to a single 45-minute event, in which the glamour Superboat 600 class was won by Rainbow Haulage (Colin Dunn and Michael Knight) effectively by default, after rival Langslow Engineering (Jason Way and Paul Greenfield) had mechanical problems on the way to the start.

The experts reckoned that for spectators, the 0.5m chop on Saturday delivered “exactly what offshore racing promises”, with “big take-offs, dramatic attitudes and boats spending plenty of time airborne”.

The gear was back in order for Langslow Engineering to claim the win on January 25.

Greenfield said the Gisborne race scheduled for February 14 will go ahead.

Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter, based in Napier and with 53 years in the news industry, including more than covering most aspects of local and regional news in Hawke’s Bay.