Two national titles have been won by Hawkins and his crew over the past month as he continues to accumulate national honours.
Hawkins though is modest about the achievement.
He said yachting was a sport he loved, which he did every weekend, and which he wished more people, especially youngsters, would give a go.
At Waitangi Day weekend, Hawkins lined up in the national Ross 780 championships and won the event raced out of his home club, Port Chalmers Yacht Club, where he is commodore.
Then last weekend, he and his crew travelled to Lyttelton and won the Noelex 25 national championships, beating the Cantabrians in their own back ard.
Racing Flashback, he won six of nine races on Lyttelton Harbour to be a convincing winner.
It was the first time he and his crew of Andrew Duncan, Will Bennett and Ann Jones had been on a boat of that exact design for 3⅓ years.
Hawkins used to own the yacht he won in and spent most of the Friday doing repairs to get it to the standard needed.
Hawkins said they only went to the championships in Lyttelton after being invited.
There was no secret to his success. It was just good teamwork.
‘‘Things happen. You get out there, the crew works together really well and you have a bit of smarts,’’ he said.
The two classes — Ross 780 and Noelex 25 — had the basic same design although the said he Ross 780 was faster.
Ryan Duder was the other crew member in the Ross 780 championships at Port Chalmers.
Hawkins has won more than a dozen national titles in different classes over the years and said it simply came down to getting out on to the water.
‘‘It’s a good sport for kids to get into. It is sport you can learn young and then be a sport for life. You can do it whatever your age. It is a popular sport around the country but we need to get more kids into it down here.
‘‘It is not an overly expensive sport. A lot of clubs will supply boats to people and help them learn. It can be a relatively cheap sport. It’s like any sport, the sky is the limit if you want to spend money but you don’t have to spend it.’’
