Sailing club
Coffs Harbour Yacht Club
About
Coffs Harbour Yacht Club at a glance
Every autumn, ocean racing yachts slide across a finish line laid in open water outside Coffs Harbour, and the town's yacht club is waiting for them. Coffs Harbour Yacht Club — "The Coffs Yachtie" to locals — is where the Pittwater to Coffs Harbour Yacht Race finishes each year, one of the country's major offshore classics, and that role says everything about the club's dual personality: a community dinghy club on a sheltered harbour that also knows exactly how to welcome a fleet of exhausted ocean racers. The 2022 race weekend even came with its own signature "Pittwater Pizza" and a rum cocktail christened "The Pittwater". The club has just been through a significant reinvention. Until March 2026 the venue traded as a bar and bistro, but when a potential investor pulled out of a site redevelopment, the board pivoted the organisation back toward community sailing. The City of Coffs Harbour, as Crown Land manager, took over the first floor and its commercial opportunities, while the club kept the ground floor and surrounds for sailing. Commodore John Wait framed the fresh direction as a chance to concentrate on growing competitive ocean sailing, regattas and recreational sailing —
Service area: Coffs Harbour, NSW
- Club type
- Yacht Club (mixed keelboat+dinghy)
- Australian Sailing
- Affiliated · 2025-26
- Primary classes
- Yacht Club (mixed keelboat+dinghy)
- Kids learn to sail
- Available
About Coffs Harbour Yacht Club
Every autumn, ocean racing yachts slide across a finish line laid in open water outside Coffs Harbour, and the town's yacht club is waiting for them. Coffs Harbour Yacht Club — "The Coffs Yachtie" to locals — is where the Pittwater to Coffs Harbour Yacht Race finishes each year, one of the country's major offshore classics, and that role says everything about the club's dual personality: a community dinghy club on a sheltered harbour that also knows exactly how to welcome a fleet of exhausted ocean racers. The 2022 race weekend even came with its own signature "Pittwater Pizza" and a rum cocktail christened "The Pittwater". The club has just been through a significant reinvention. Until March 2026 the venue traded as a bar and bistro, but when a potential investor pulled out of a site redevelopment, the board pivoted the organisation back toward community sailing. The City of Coffs Harbour, as Crown Land manager, took over the first floor and its commercial opportunities, while the club kept the ground floor and surrounds for sailing. Commodore John Wait framed the fresh direction as a chance to concentrate on growing competitive ocean sailing, regattas and recreational sailing — which, he noted, has always been at the club's heart. On the water the offering splits cleanly in two: off-the-beach dinghy sailing and yacht sailing, with twilight racing each Thursday during daylight saving across both sheltered harbour and open-water courses. The Mayor has called the club "something of an institution for locals and visitors" alike — attributed praise that matches its sixty-plus years on the Jetty Foreshores.
Training and sailing programs
The standout feature of Coffs Harbour's learn-to-sail offer is what comes bundled with it: the Start Sailing 1 course for teenagers over 15 and adults runs across three weekday mornings in club-owned Pacer dinghies for around $200, and the price includes three months of club membership, three months sailing the club's own boats on Saturday mornings, and entry to the Saturday Skill Development Training sessions between 9.30am and midday. In effect, the course doesn't end — it converts directly into club life, with a boat and a coaching session waiting each weekend. As an accredited Australian Sailing Discover Sailing Centre, the club also delivers Start Sailing 2 and Better Sailing-level instruction, plus Discover Sailing Experiences, all using club boats and equipment. The club has invested in the instructor pipeline too, hosting an Australian Sailing Dinghy Instructor course in October 2020 to qualify new trainers across Start Sailing 1 and 2 and Better Sailing. Families get practical support as an approved NSW Active Kids provider, accepting the $100 voucher for each school-enrolled child, and members can book the club dinghies free through the club's online portal. For those who'd rather go straight to yachts, limited crewing spots are advertised via the club's offshore contact. SailPass offers another low-commitment door in: the first three sailing days free, then $10 a day up to ten days, with insurance cover and facility use included. Notably absent from the published program is a Tackers-branded course for 7-to-12-year-olds — the advertised pathway starts at 15 — so younger children are the one gap in an otherwise well-drilled system. The Thursday twilight series, running through the cooler months as the Geoff King Motors series, gives graduates immediate racing to aim at.
Sailing waters
The clubhouse occupies one of the best addresses on the Mid North Coast: 30 Marina Drive, on the Jetty Foreshores alongside the town's international marina and its historic timber jetty, with the harbour spread out in front of the windows. It's Crown Land, and under the 2026 arrangements the City of Coffs Harbour manages the building's first floor for commercial and hospitality use while the club keeps the ground floor and the surrounding rigging areas. Sailors get two distinct playgrounds. Inside the southern breakwater the harbour offers sheltered, forgiving water — the natural classroom for the Pacer training fleet and a refuge when the Pacific is up. Outside the breakwater lies open ocean, with the Solitary Islands offshore, and that's where the club's offshore character shows. Finish lines for the Pittwater race are set in open water as an extension of the harbour leads, with arrivals berthing at the marina under assistance from Marine Rescue Coffs Harbour and club volunteers. The adjacent Coffs Harbour Boatyard runs a 75-tonne travel lift, making the harbour a practical service stop for visiting race fleets as well. Local conditions come with a signature extra: whales. Humpbacks migrate along this coast in season, and the club's own sailing pages feature one breaching among the club dinghies — a sight few learn-to-sail venues in the world can match. Thursday twilight racing alternates between harbour and open-water courses, so regulars get genuine variety without leaving home waters. Function spaces in the building are available for hire, keeping the venue earning its keep between race days.
Club history
Coffs Harbour Yacht Club began in 1960 as Coffs Harbour Sailing Club, its first home an old timber boat shed on the foreshore. Photographs from 1962 capture the early scene: boats rigged on the beach beside the jetty, the boatshed behind them. The timber shed eventually gave way to a brick clubhouse with a tower and an anchor monument — new enough to be photographed in December 1983 — and that building, renovated again in 2023, is the one sailors know today. The club's national profile rests on a friendship that started, by the account given in Pittwater sailing circles, with a drink. An unplanned stopover and some warm local hospitality grew, about thirty years before 2012, into the Pittwater to Coffs Harbour Yacht Race — the 31st running started on 2 January 2012, pointing to a first edition around 1981–82. The 226-nautical-mile course from Barrenjoey Headland has produced serious racing: Wild Oats IX set the monohull record of 18 hours 29 minutes 14 seconds in 2003, and the ORMA 60 Team Australia the multihull mark of 17 hours 3 minutes 5 seconds in 2014. The race week became the Pittwater & Coffs Harbour Regatta in 2012, absorbing the inaugural Australian PHS Championship, and earned the nickname the "warm water classic"; the 40th running was scheduled for March 2026 with presentations at the club. June 2023 brought a different kind of milestone when the club hosted its first International Etchells championship, a lead-up to the 2024 Etchells Worlds, drawing Olympians, world champions and Colin Beashel, mainsheet trimmer aboard America II in 1983. Then came the 2026 pivot: bar and restaurant operations ceased on 30 March, and with the City taking the first floor, the club recommitted itself to the sailing that had started it all sixty-six years earlier.