St Clair sisters Stephanie and Carla Laughton dominated the women's division and won all four titles - tube rescue, mass rescue, assembly rescue and single rescue - in the messy Whangamata surf.
Teams from both St Clair and Brighton clubs contested the event, which was previously known as the North Island championships and now make up part of the four-event national series.
The Eastern Coromandel Coast event was attended by 22 clubs from throughout New Zealand.
The Invercargill-born Laughtons missed the first round of the series in Omaha last month but made their presence felt in Whangamata, where they won the tube rescue title at the national championships.
"We're happy with the way we raced," Carla Laughton said.
"Our aim was to race with as few errors as possible. If you don't get the basics right in conditions like that you fall behind very quickly."
Crews faced challenging conditions at the usually calm Whangamata Beach as strong onshore winds powered a messy 2m surf at the inflatable rescue boats as they were navigated to the buoy line where patients waited to be plucked from the surf.
A number of crews came to grief as the conditions got the better of them. Twelve boats were flipped on the first morning of racing alone as crews came to terms with the conditions.
"The surf was a mess," Stephanie Laughton said.
"Waves were close together or doubling up on each other and if you got too much air off the tops the boat was caught by the wind and thrown about."
St Clair's under-21 crew of Niam Chronican and Scott Fraser won a silver medal in the mass rescue, and the senior crew of Issac Davies and Michael Crombie won bronze in the mass rescue.
St Clair finished third overall.
New Plymouth's East End won the event with Mount Maunganui second. Brighton finished 16th.
The next round of racing is to be held at New Plymouth's Oakura Beach in mid January before heading to Dunedin's Warrington Beach on March 3.
The national championships will be held at Warrington Beach in late March.
