Cruising Yacht Club of Hamilton Island

About

Local details at a glance

Every Wednesday afternoon in season, a scatter of cruising yachts musters off one of Australia's most famous resort islands, and the crews stepping aboard range from first-timers to a former Olympian. This is the Cruising Yacht Club of Hamilton Island — CYCHI — a volunteer-run community club in the Whitsundays whose weekly twilight racing draws what a Hamilton Island magazine profile called "a merry band of first-timers and seasoned sailors alike": typically 40 to 60 sailors spread across roughly ten boats of varying sizes. The club's inclusive streak is its defining trait. The regatta invitation reads "All Yachts Welcome — Big or Small," and the fleet proves it: a past regatta field ran from an 8-metre trimaran up to a Hanse 505. Crewing is gloriously informal — locals hop aboard as invited crew, and local resident Bruce Absolon's 60-foot Spirit of the Naid often sails with more than twenty people on board. Even the island resort's CEO, Glenn Bourke — a world champion and former Olympian — races with the club; Commodore Mark Strobel joked in the island's Reef Magazine that they would have to tie buckets to his legs to slow him down. One distinction matters for visitors: CYCHI is

Service area: Hamilton Island, QLD