Held at St Clair Beach, Dunedin, the weather and swell couldn’t have been better during the three-day event. With the final of the Open Men’s consisting of the two local heroes’ and number one seed Hayden Brain (NS) and former New Zealand Champ Manu Schafer (PST) all needed to be on their game right from the start.  Unfortunately the two visitors couldn’t find the same 1.5 metre set waves that Hutton and Carse managed to secure and both looked slightly rattled midway though the final.  Hutton made the final his after catching a long right-hander and performing a series of in the pocket re-entries and sweeping cutbacks. Leaving Carse, Schafer and Brain to fight for the minor placing’s.  

In the Open Women’s Final, Sophia Moore continued her good form from the previous weekend (winning the Women’s R&R South Island Longboard Pro Am).   Moore showed the large crowd that had gathered to watch the finals that she is every bit as talented as New Zealand number one Daisy Thomas. Thomas, like Schafer and Brain in the Men’s final, needed a good scoring wave to challenge Moore, however time ran out as a set approached.  Local surfer Hayley Coakes and young Kaikoura surfer Haley Baxter placing third and fourth respectively. 

Manu Schafer, dominated the Senior’s, as usual going vertical and throwing lots of spray, Neil Robb took out second place on a count back from Richard Baxter, with Dan Warren in fourth.

Alethea Lock continued her winning form taking out the Junior Women’s over Kristi Zarifeh, Haley Baxter and Kate Moody.

Cody McCusker and local Ben Bennett battled it out in the Cadets. McCusker chose the right-handers while Bennett tended to look at the lefts breaking into the channel.  In the end both grom’s finished only 0.03 points apart in favour of McCusker. Two other local boys Jordan Durst and Tom Bracegirdle placed third and fourth.

In the Grommets U14 Division, Tane Wallis from Piha absolutely tore the bag out of it, putting the three other finalists in combo situation midway though the 20-minute heat. Tane ending up with a total heat score of 18.93 out of a possible 20.

Tane also battled it out with older brother Zen in the Junior’s, the younger Wallis was the victor on this occasion, and to rub salt in Zen’s wounds the Head Judge gave him a dressing down regarding surfing into the comp area after his heat.

Dean Cooke continued his cracker of a season winning the Grand Masters over local Kerry McNally, Glen “The Knuckle’ Shuker and Don Nicholson.

Tony Schafer’s critical backhand surfing saw him take out the Masters from Richard Ayson, Jamie Gordon and Neil Robb.

The Longboarding division saw Thomas Kibblewhite’s traditional Mal riding out surf the new school manoeuvres of Shayne Baxter, Dan Warren surfed his way into third and young Leroy Rust who is riding a longboard to get back into surfing after a knee problem placed fourth.

Well known South Island surfer Johnny Fenton took out the Veterans after scoring a couple of nice lefthanders towards the end of the final.