April 1, 2012: Mona Vale, and South Curl Curl are the toast of the surf boat area after the 2012 Australian Surf Life Saving Championships at North Kirra.

The Mona Vale club have won back-to-back A grade gold medals with the same crew of Bryce Munro, James Davison, Wes Dose, Sam Funch and James Morison who won the club's first open boat gold since 1939 at Kurrawa last year.

The Mona Vale boys were too strong for Bateman's Bay and North Cottesloe in the near millpond conditions which made for a final between the best rowing crews in the nation. Bateman's Bay also won the under 23s.

To win one Australian title is special but to mount a successful defence is not easy and they are now set to challenge for a third straight title, which has seen clubs such as Cronulla, Ballina Lighthouse-Lismore, Warriewood and North Cottesloe (four) achieve in the past.

For South Curl Curl sweep Chris Flemming, victory was sweet in the open women's final, their first National gold win since 2008 and with survivors Lara Raymond, Elly Gillis and Kate Mortimer re-joined by former star, Olympian Yanda Nossiter and Anna Webster, head of North Cottesloe and Bilgola.

The under-23 women's championship was taken out by Helensburgh-Stanwell Park from North Cottesloe and Bulli.

Another NSW South Coast club, Moruya, won the men's reserve grade final from Northcliffe and North Bondi, while Batemans Bay continued the south coasters' golden haul when they won the men's under-23 crown, with Coolum and Collaroy filling the minor placings.

Richard Brierty's Avoca Beach crew won the under-19 boat gold medal ahead of Alexandra Headland and Dee Why

(Images by Jon Dibbs)

Stockton Beach near Newcastle played host to Australia's biggest surf boat carnival over the weekend of 10, 11 & 12 February, 2012, in fast and furious racing conditions. A record of 388 crews from as far as Western Australia and Tasmania competed for titles in the Navy Australian Surf Rowers League Australian Open.

Crews covered a distance of 400 metres, with round robin style racing ensuring that the best crews on the day represented their division in the finals.

Day one of racing saw a relatively nice morning quickly deteriorate after a cold front came through at around 2.30pm. The change in weather delayed racing considerably with minimal visibility after the front. A 30 to 40 knot north easterly wind and rough surf conditions challenged rowers and many crews took a pounding from the seas.

A thunderstorm delayed the start of competition on day two, however when the sun came out mid morning, a 5-10 knot southerly and gentle rolling surf made life easy for the rowers. The highlight of the day was the Trans Tasman Surf Rowers Challenge "Battle Of The Ditch" between Australia & New Zealand. The closely fought battle drew a huge crowd to Stockton Beach, with Australia winning the Open Women's race (represented by South Curl Curl) and New Zealand winning the Open Men's (represented by Piha).

The third day of the 2012 Navy Australian Open saw outstanding weather with a 5-10 knot south easterly and a gentle rolling surf making for tight racing.

"Today saw the semi finals and finals of the Series capping off what was an outstanding success for the Australian Surf Rowers League and Navy," said Bert Hunt President of the Navy ASRL.

"Three days of competition have proved Stockton Club was more than capable of supporting such a huge event," said CEO Hunter Branch SLSA Mrs Rhonda Scruton.

GALLERY: Highlights from the 2012 Navy ASRL Australian Open Surfboat carnival

Final Results:

Open Men

Open Women

Under 23 Women

Under 23 Men

Reserves

Under 19

About the NAVY ASRL Series

NAVY is the naming rights holder of the 2011-12 Australian Surf Rowers League Series. The 2011-12 NAVY Australian Surf Rowers League Series consists of 26 events around Australia from November 2011 to February 2012 and are held on some of the country's premier beaches.

The Australian Surf Rowers League was born in New South Wales in 1992 as the International League of Australian Surfboat Rowers Inc. (ILOR) and currently has over 3,000 members from over 260 clubs which make up over 450 crews competing nationally each year.

For information about a job in the NAVY, log on to defencejobs.gov.au or call 13 19 01

ASRL Open

We are now just weeks away from the 2012 Stockton Open on the 10, 11 & 12 of February. The Stockton Surf Club and Hunter Branch along with the Newcastle City Council are doing a great job to showcase this event for us.

Entries close with the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it at midnight on Friday 20 January. Late entries will attract a 50% loading and will only be accepted for 1 week after the closing date. Entry forms are available on the ASRL website www.asrl.com.au

The program can be found on the website and will be updated with actual times etc as soon as we have final entries and drawers sorted.

ASRL Open a Three-Day Event

Just to confirm that we do understand the difficulties some crew will face if they are drawn to compete on the Friday but this is a feature of the growth of this event. Sure some will argue that we can cram everybody into two days finishing late on Sunday and hope like hell that we have no stoppages, tough conditions or anything else to holds us up. Others will argue that races can be run with shorter turn around times but the reality is that at just about all events including the Australians where we have the best Officials available the best that can be achieved is a seven minute turn around.

The majority of members, (over 80%) when asked in a recent survey responded that they wanted the event to run over three days so everybody gets better less rushed racing and most importantly soft cuts.

This will be a great three days of racing featuring the full-blown National Interstate on Friday, the Battle of the Ditch for Open Men & Open Women against the top NZ crews on Saturday and then all finals on Sunday. If your serious about your competition the Open with close to 300 crew entries is a must go.

Elimination V Round Robin at Nationals

In a thread on the website several questions have been asked about the process on how this decision was reached and if the ASRL had been consulted. A glitch did occur in that the SLS Circular was released prior to the ASRL being conferred with for which acknowledgment has been made by SLS. We accept that this was a simple mistake as the SBC is still in its infancy and processes still need to be understood by all involved.

That said we have in the last week conferred back through our committee to seek comment and some direction to put back to SLSA on the issue. The membership must remember that each year for the last 3 or 4 we have conducted an all of membership survey where we seek your response and input to a wide range of questions. In the last three years one of the questions was to your preference for RR of Elimination at the National Championship. The majority response to this question was for Elimination racing and that was discussed at a May conference of the ASRL and ultimately reported back to SLSA.

The following is an email that has been sent to SLSA but just to be clear when we spoke to the Referee about this issue the very reasonable points that were made by him in explaining the reasons for the decision included:

• In previous years we could run from 7am to 5pm – we are now restricted to 8am- 4pm at the Nationals
• We have ditched Tuesday from this year's calendar starting on Wednesday
• They have to plan for only 4 hours racing on Friday
• Boats have to finished by around 1pm on Sunday
• A lot of available time has been lost under the new arrangements and with the expected number of crews attending it will become very hard to fit in if racing RR in adverse conditions
• Last year with reasonable conditions the best they could achieve was an 7 minute turn round time
• All these things when put together could force severe cuts if racing RR
• By running elimination of 6 boats – 4 through in R1 and then a soft cut repechage almost all crews get to round three
• Under elimination it means that the cuts can be soft the whole way through i.e. 6 boats drop 2 and that the officials do have the ability to make change to the format in adverse conditions from round one unlike RR where the three rounds must be completed before change can happen

"The SBC wishes to advise that we have in the past as the ASRL taken a poll of our members and at that time the majority supported Elimination racing at the National Championship and consequentially this has previously been advised in writing to SLSA.

This is always a tricky subject, as many rowers believe it is better to ensure three rows at all events, maybe at the expense a harsh cut if conditions dictate. While others are firmly in the camp that at the National Championship racing should always be elimination.

At this time based on a very short lead time for us to properly hold a full face to face committee discussion and certainly no time to go back to the full rowing community for consultation we can only base our comment on what we have previously canvassed which resulted in majority supporting Elimination racing at the National Championship. That said we are comfortable that for this year if time permits that the event be held under RR rules with a reasonable soft cut at the end of the RR if that suits the program. If however the Referee isn't confident that a reasonable cut can be assured after the RR then we ask that Elimination be the order of the day with Repecharge and soft cuts of 4 crews through each time."