About
Broome Sailing Club at a glance
Tides run the show in Broome. This Kimberley town sits on some of the most dramatically tidal water in Australia — as general context, the ebb and flow off Cable Beach is measured in metres, not centimetres — so it is no surprise that the local sailing club arranges its life around the tide tables. Broome Sailing Club meets on Sundays every second week, with session times that shift to suit the water, launching off the beach at Gantheaume Point, the red-rock headland closing off Cable Beach's southern end. It is a club without a permanent clubhouse: as of 2019 it was collaborating with the Shire of Broome and the Broome Turf Club on designs for a permanent base at a proposed Gantheaume Point location, and its old website has since gone quiet. Honesty requires a caveat here: the club is absent from Australian Sailing's present affiliation fee schedule, so its formal status is unverified, and much of what is publicly known dates from a 2019 Australian Sailing feature and Shire of Broome documents. What those sources show is a small, welcoming, beach-launched operation — public sailing days with hire boats available, day membership from ten dollars, a barbecue after the afternoon sail
Service area: Broome, WA
- Club type
- Sailing Club
- Australian Sailing
- Not listed as affiliated
- Primary classes
- Sailing Club
- Kids learn to sail
- Available
About Broome Sailing Club
Tides run the show in Broome. This Kimberley town sits on some of the most dramatically tidal water in Australia — as general context, the ebb and flow off Cable Beach is measured in metres, not centimetres — so it is no surprise that the local sailing club arranges its life around the tide tables. Broome Sailing Club meets on Sundays every second week, with session times that shift to suit the water, launching off the beach at Gantheaume Point, the red-rock headland closing off Cable Beach's southern end. It is a club without a permanent clubhouse: as of 2019 it was collaborating with the Shire of Broome and the Broome Turf Club on designs for a permanent base at a proposed Gantheaume Point location, and its old website has since gone quiet. Honesty requires a caveat here: the club is absent from Australian Sailing's present affiliation fee schedule, so its formal status is unverified, and much of what is publicly known dates from a 2019 Australian Sailing feature and Shire of Broome documents. What those sources show is a small, welcoming, beach-launched operation — public sailing days with hire boats available, day membership from ten dollars, a barbecue after the afternoon sail, and a commodore, Phil Cox in 2019, fronting a committee working toward a permanent home. For sailors passing through the Kimberley, it is the kind of club where you simply turn up on a Sunday and see what the tide allows. The club also maintains a Facebook presence, which remains the most reliable way for travellers and locals alike to find out when the next sailing day falls.
Training and sailing programs
The most concrete training activity on record sits at the top end of the pathway: Broome Sailing Club has hosted Australian Sailing Dinghy Instructor revalidation and reaccreditation courses at Gantheaume Point, Cable Beach — meaning the club has served as a venue where instructors themselves maintain their qualifications. That is a significant contribution for a club of this size, since in remote regions the availability of local revalidation can decide whether a town keeps any qualified instructors at all. For the general public, the documented offer is simple and welcoming: the club's sailing days make boats available for hire, so newcomers can get afloat without owning anything, and day membership started from ten dollars in 2019, with a maximum of three events before full membership was required. Beyond that, candour is needed. No Discover Sailing Centre accreditation, no Tackers junior program, no list of raced classes and no regatta calendar could be verified, and it would be wrong to invent one — the club's website is unreachable and its affiliation status unconfirmed. As general context, remote clubs of this kind across northern Australia typically run informal beach-cat and dinghy sailing, teach by pairing newcomers with experienced members, and lean on visiting Australian Sailing staff for anything formal — the 2011 visit by a Yachting WA training administrator to this club fits exactly that pattern. What Broome's current program looks like week to week can only be confirmed by contacting the club through its Facebook presence or via the Shire of Broome, which keeps the club on its recreation radar.
Sailing waters
Broome's sailing happens where the Kimberley meets the Indian Ocean. The club launches off the beach at Gantheaume Point — the rocky promontory closing off Cable Beach's southern end — putting boats straight onto open tropical water, with Roebuck Bay around the corner. General context matters here because it shapes everything the club does. The tides in this part of Western Australia are among the largest in the southern hemisphere, which is why the club's fortnightly Sunday sessions carry no fixed clock time: the water decides. Cable Beach's broad, firm sand makes a superb natural boat park at the right state of tide, while the point's red cliffs give the setting a visual drama few clubs anywhere can match. For cruising sailors, Broome is also a recognised staging point — the town fronts some of the most remote and celebrated cruising country on the Australian coast in the Kimberley, with its drowned river valleys, island anchorages and waterfall-fed bays lying to the north-east, though that is regional context rather than club program. Facilities at the club itself are minimal by circumstance: as of 2019 there was no permanent clubhouse, plans for a Gantheaume Point home were being worked up with the Shire and the Broome Turf Club, and the Shire's Sport and Recreation Plan 2021–2031 formally recorded that sailing needed a clubhouse and compound to aid training and to host visiting sailors. Until that build happens, the beach remains the clubhouse — and on a Broome afternoon, that is no hardship.
Club history
Documenting Broome Sailing Club's past means working from fragments, and the founding year and founders are simply not on record. The earliest clear snapshot dates from around 2011, when the club's headquarters was on Cable Beach and a Yachting WA Training Administrator, Tony Strickland, paid a visit — a photo caption from the day records Commodore Sandy Ogg alongside members Stan Best, Kevin Smith, Phil Cox, Paul Adair and Bob Williams, a roll-call that hints at a tight-knit group. By 2019 Phil Cox had become Commodore with Miranda Dibdin as Vice Commodore, and Australian Sailing profiled the club's central ambition: after years without a permanent clubhouse, it had joined forces with the Shire of Broome and the Broome Turf Club to plan a permanent base at a proposed Gantheaume Point location. That year brought practical wins and community momentum. In May 2019, federal MP Melissa Price presented the club with a $5,000 cheque toward a much-needed replacement safety boat, and the season's Opening Day on Sunday 12 May at Gantheaume Point followed the club's easy formula of a pre-lunch launch, an afternoon sail and a barbecue. The Shire's Sport and Recreation Plan 2021–2031 later carried the same aspiration into official policy, recording sailing's requirement for a clubhouse and compound. The club also appears in the Shire's 2019 club development survey as an active local organisation. The record thins after that — the website no longer resolves — so the club's most recent chapter is best described as quiet but, on the available evidence, still afloat.