Brisbane 18 Footers Sailing Club

About

Local details at a glance

One class of boat, pursued for well over a century, defines this organisation. Brisbane 18 Footers Sailing Club — which styles itself the city's home for both the modern 18-footer and its heritage skiff cousins — turned one hundred in 2020 and stands as the city's original 18-footer body, affiliated with Australian Sailing. Around the modern 18ft skiff orbit the historical 10ft and 12ft skiffs, boats that keep the class's long memory physically alive on the water. The club's pedigree is remarkable: by its own historical reckoning, Queensland craft claimed 23 national 18-footer titles up to 1958, and its members and designers repeatedly changed the sport itself — the heel-less Aberdare of the 1930s provoked a schism that created a whole new Sydney league, while the Ben Lexcen-designed Venom ruled the 1961 world titles on the Brisbane River. The lean decades that followed, as costs and technology favoured the southern fleets, have lately given way to a genuine revival: in January 2025 the club staged the national championship on Waterloo Bay, ending a 35-year absence of the title event from Queensland waters. Today the club operates without a single clubhouse of its own, racing inste

Service area: Tingalpa, QLD