Marina service
Cronulla Marina (Calico Marina)
About
Cronulla Marina (Calico Marina) at a glance
Marina at 2 Tonkin Street, Cronulla, on Gunnamatta Bay next to the Bundeena ferry wharf: casual and permanent berths for boats to 22 m, diesel and unleaded fuel, black-water pump-out, 60 t slipway (80 ft/7.5 m beam) via Cronulla Slipway & Shipwright Services, and the Pippis waterfront restaurant.
Service area: Port Hacking
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Calico Marina
- Region
- Port Hacking
- Water body
- Port Hacking (Gunnamatta Bay)
- Wet berths
- 70
- Maximum vessel
- 22 m
- Berth types
- permanent berthing, casual berthing
Facilities and services
- fuel
- pump-out
- slipway
- repairs & maintenance
- ice
- restaurant/cafe
- brokerage
- boat sales
- fuel (diesel & unleaded)
- black-water pump-out ($40 non-patrons)
- 60t slipway
- shipwright services
- member rewards club
- waterfront restaurant (Pippis)
About Cronulla Marina (Calico Marina)
Calico Marina, known to most locals simply as Cronulla Marina, occupies a tight waterfront pocket at 2 Tonkin Street on Gunnamatta Bay, right beside the Bundeena ferry wharf at the northern end of the Cronulla foreshore. It is the only true full-service marina on Port Hacking's northern shore, and its position gives it a character halfway between working boatyard and waterfront dining destination. Around seventy berths pack the basin, holding a mixture of permanently berthed cruisers and yachts up to 22 metres and a rotating cast of casual visitors who come for fuel, the slipway or lunch. The marina's history is bound up with Cronulla's boating culture: Gunnamatta Bay has been the suburb's harbour since the ferry era, and the marina sits where commuters once boarded steamers for the run across to Bundeena. That ferry still docks a few steps away, which makes Calico unusual among Sydney marinas in having genuine public-transport reach, with Cronulla railway station also within walking distance. The biggest change in recent years has come ashore, where the team behind The Grounds of Alexandria opened Pippis, a west-facing waterfront restaurant that has turned the marina into an evening destination for people who never set foot on a boat. The result is a marina with two lives: by day a practical service port with fuel, slipping and shipwright work, by night a dining strip looking across the bay to the lights of the national park shore. For berth holders it offers something increasingly rare on Port Hacking, a secure serviced berth in the middle of a suburb rather than up a mangrove creek.
Marina facilities
Calico runs a genuine full-service operation on a compact site. Berthing covers permanent and casual pens for boats to 22 metres, with water and 240V power supplied at the berths; casual berths are offered when space allows and are arranged through the office, which is staffed from 8.30am to 4.30pm seven days a week, closing only on Christmas Day. The fuel wharf sells both diesel and unleaded petrol during office hours, with a request to call ahead for large quantities, and ice is sold on site. A black-water pump-out is available, charged at forty dollars per pump-out for non-marina patrons, a service few other Port Hacking facilities offer. There are no swing moorings attached to the marina, a point the operator states plainly in its published FAQs. The heavy-lift side of the business is the 60-tonne slipway run by Cronulla Slipway and Shipwright Services, which can haul boats up to 80 feet long and 7.5 metres in the beam; the shipwright team handles antifouling, general maintenance and restoration work, and takes enquiries directly. Bathroom facilities serve berth holders, and the marina also runs a brokerage arm, marketing catamarans, yachts and power vessels with tailored sales packages. A Calico Club rewards program gives berth holders member incentives with partner businesses. On the hospitality side, Pippis, operated by The Grounds, brings a full kitchen and bar to the waterfront with sunset views over Gunnamatta Bay, and the Bundeena ferry wharf next door makes crew changes and guest access easy. In short, the marina covers the complete cycle: berth, fuel, pump-out, haul, repair, sell and eat, all within a few hundred metres.
Local sailing knowledge
Gunnamatta Bay is a narrow, north-running arm on the northern side of Port Hacking, well protected from ocean swell, so berthing at Calico is calm in almost any weather. Boats approaching from sea cross the Port Hacking entrance between Bass and Flinders Point off Cronulla and Jibbon Point at Bundeena; the entrance is not barred like the northern-rivers ports but it is open to the Tasman, and a strong ebb against an easterly can make the run in lumpy, so timing the tide helps. Once inside, Port Hacking is a drowned river valley with deep water almost to the shores, and the run up to Gunnamatta Bay takes only minutes past the Cronulla beaches. The Cronulla foreshore strip, with its cafes, surf shops and the railway station, is a flat walk from the marina, and the Bundeena ferry alongside gives access to the Royal National Park walking tracks, making this a handy base for mixed boating-and-bushwalking weekends. Local boating knowledge concentrates on the estuary's traffic: weekend queues at the fuel wharf, sailing club dinghies racing off the bay, and the wash from passing game boats heading out through the heads. South across the estuary lie the quieter anchorages of the Royal National Park shore, from Jibbon Beach to the secluded bays around Cabbage Tree Creek, all within an easy afternoon run. Provisioning is effortless by Sydney standards, with supermarkets and a fish co-op in Cronulla's centre. For visiting skippers the practical points are to phone ahead for both fuel and casual berthing in summer, to expect the slipway to book out before Christmas, and to remember that the bay shoals toward its head, so deeper-keeled yachts keep to the marked water off the ferry wharf.