Tauranga turned on excellent conditions for a weekend of championship windsurfing with a fresh sea breeze and occasional gusty winds for a challenging North Island Board Champs.

Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club hosted the two-day championship starting a week-long focus on windsurfing.

Windsurfers take to the water in Tauranga Harbour at the weekend.

Windsurfing has been one of New Zealand's top Olympic medal winning events of recent years and last week's championship event showcased some of Tauranga's 2016 Olympic hopefuls.

In May this year windsurfing was dumped from the sailing event schedule in Rio instead making kiteboarding a main event.

The reversal put on hold the Olympic dream of Tauranga sailor Sven Pederson, who switched to kiteboarding in order to keep his Olympic dream alive.

Windsurfing was reinstated as a main sailing event in the Rio Olympics six months later and Sven, 19, took up windsurfing again.

The fourth board championship regatta, held off the Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club base at Sulphur Point, included kiteboards for the first time this year.

Leading the men's kite fleet were Auckland's Dave Robertson, who was ninth at the October Worlds event, and Tauranga's Torrin Bright who has recently returned from winning silver at the Sailing World Cup regatta Sail in Melbourne.

Torrin took out the kiteboarding event from Dave by just two points.

Another standout performance came from 17-year-old Tauranga local Alex Hart, who at 16-years-old and after little more than a month on the RS:X board, came top under-19 and was runner-up in his heat.

Competition results are: