Tonning-up past Westshore and Ahuriri — on the water

Napier has scored a boat racing coup by being confirmed as the host city launching a new offshore series in the prime-time spot of the Auckland Anniversary weekend.

Espresso Engineers was the winning boat in last year's offshore race at Napier. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand Offshore Power Boat Association’s annual drivers’ championship will be staged on just three courses, with the Napier leg on Saturday and Sunday, January 25-26. The Napier event comprises four races — two in the afternoon of each day.

The races will start at Te Karaka (Perfume Point), with spectator vantage points from Westshore and Ahuriri. Entries are expected to be up on recent years, with crews and family from the north taking advantage of the anniversary weekend break, and a new up-to-140hp class aimed at encouraging new drivers into the sport.

Dubbed the "ageless" Chindit, this boat has been racing offshore through four decades and has competed in the Napier race at least 20 times. Photo / Supplied

Napier last had the Auckland Anniversary weekend date more than 20 years ago, association president Paul Greenfield recalling the keenness with which racers, their teams and families took the chance of a break in Hawke’s Bay.

It has ever since been the date for the sport’s Thunder on the Great Lake in Taupō, which observes the Auckland Anniversary holiday weekend. However, the crews are facing increasing competition for accommodation from an annual major summer concert, this season headlined by Australian rock icons Cold Chisel and Icehouse.

The other legs will be on Lake Taupō on February 15-16 and Whitianga Harbour on March 22-23.

Greenfield, of Auckland, said the Napier races — regarded by many in the sport as usually the series’ only true “offshore” racing — would be popular with the sport’s Auckland fraternity, offering more racing and with a Monday public holiday, enough time to get back to Auckland for work.

Former champion Wayne Carson, from Hawke’s Bay but living in Auckland, won the drivers’ championship five times with Auckland driver Richard Shores and twice with brother and Napier panelbeater and businessman Tony Carson.

He said of the Auckland Anniversary weekend invasion: “It didn’t happen often, but when it did they certainly did all come down to Napier.”

While the sport hasn’t yet seen the revival of the 10-metres-plus Class 1 catamarans and monohulls that brought international offshore racing to Napier back in the day, the timing of the event and the establishment of the new small-boats class is expected to increase entries.

It is also possible there will be a turnout in tribute to former Napier businessman Ken Carson, who died in June, having been a backbone of the series for as much as three decades along with wife Colleen.