A familiar lakeside pastime will have a competitive edge on May 16, when New Zealand’s first-ever stone skimming championships takes place at Lake Hāwea.

Organiser Richie Laming, Lake Hāwea Station’s tourism manager, said the event is part serious sport, part tongue-in-cheek fun.

“You can only take it so seriously – it is stone skimming,” he told the Wānaka App. 

“But we are going to be producing national champions.”

Around 150 competitors and the same number of spectators are expected to line the lake to compete in open men’s and women’s categories. 

The winners in each category will also go home with much more than national bragging rights - they’ll head to the World Stone Skimming Championships in Scotland, with organisers planning to cover the costs.

Richie said it might be the “most outrageous prize in stone skimming history”.

There is currently no clear frontrunner in stone skimming in New Zealand, Richie said, with most of the competition “dominated by our northern hemisphere counterparts.”

Entries for New Zealand’s inaugural event are open to anyone looking for some competitive fun, Richie said. 

“If you’re not skimming well it’s humorous; if you are, it’s competition.”

Richie Laming says entries are open for anyone looking for competitive fun.

The idea to host the country’s first stone skimming championships came from the lake itself.

“We’ve always thrown around the idea because Lake Hāwea, on a classic inversion layer day, is so calm,” Richie said.

When he shared a Lake Hāwea stone skimming video on social media and it got “a couple of hundred thousand” views, that sealed the deal.

The championships will include round robins, semi-finals, and finals, and there will be food, entertainment, raffles auctions, and “really cool engaging events throughout the day”, with proceeds from the event going to Melanoma NZ.

Though the goal is to keep the event lighthearted, the mechanics of accurate scoring are pretty technical.

“Thrown lanes will be GPS marked; then we will ideally have a drone over the top looking at stones as they’re thrown; there will also be a surveying trig measuring where the stone ends; and we will also have people out on the water backing up the trig system as well.”

Richie said he is looking forward to showcasing the landscape and community to visitors.

“What we are really looking at shaping is an event that surprises people – we want them to come away and think ‘what a cool celebration’.”

The Aotearoa Stone Skimming Championships will take place on May 16, with May 17 a backup day for weather.

PHOTOS: Supplied