Sailing club
Cruising Yacht Club of SA
About
Cruising Yacht Club of SA at a glance
Ownership is the quality that sets the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia apart from almost every other sailing club in the country. Based at North Haven, out on Adelaide's Le Fevre Peninsula, the club holds its land and water in freehold through a unit trust — an arrangement it describes as unique in Australian yachting — which means marina berths and hardstand spaces can be bought, sold and leased, and its senior members carry voting rights. The scale is substantial by any measure: the property covers roughly 36 hectares from the inner breakwater through North Haven harbour to Lady Gowrie Drive, with berthing for 240 vessels of up to 22 metres, 150 hardstanding spaces for boats to 12 metres, and an expansion adding 74 further berths, some taking vessels of 35 metres. The club calls itself one of the country's leading yacht clubs and counts more than 1,200 members; by the harder currency of affiliation fees it sits, alongside the Royal SA Yacht Squadron, in the highest band charged to any South Australian club. The Governor of South Australia, opening the 2025/26 season on 26 October 2025, called it a cornerstone of the state's sailing community since 1973. The racing record s
Service area: North Haven, SA
- Club type
- Keelboat
- Australian Sailing
- Affiliated · 2025-26
- Primary classes
- Keelboat
- Kids learn to sail
- Available
About Cruising Yacht Club of SA
Ownership is the quality that sets the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia apart from almost every other sailing club in the country. Based at North Haven, out on Adelaide's Le Fevre Peninsula, the club holds its land and water in freehold through a unit trust — an arrangement it describes as unique in Australian yachting — which means marina berths and hardstand spaces can be bought, sold and leased, and its senior members carry voting rights. The scale is substantial by any measure: the property covers roughly 36 hectares from the inner breakwater through North Haven harbour to Lady Gowrie Drive, with berthing for 240 vessels of up to 22 metres, 150 hardstanding spaces for boats to 12 metres, and an expansion adding 74 further berths, some taking vessels of 35 metres. The club calls itself one of the country's leading yacht clubs and counts more than 1,200 members; by the harder currency of affiliation fees it sits, alongside the Royal SA Yacht Squadron, in the highest band charged to any South Australian club. The Governor of South Australia, opening the 2025/26 season on 26 October 2025, called it a cornerstone of the state's sailing community since 1973. The racing record supports the standing: three Sydney Hobart winners — SAP Ausmaid in 2000, Two True in 2009 and Secret Men's Business in 2010 — have come from its ranks, and it holds the organising role for the Adelaide to Port Lincoln Yacht Race, first sailed in 1950. Yet the calendar also finds room for Crabbing Day in March, Italian Night in July and a Boating and Fishing Showcase each November, while the Admirals Bar and Bistro and Mariners Ristorante open the clubhouse to the dining public.
Training and sailing programs
The Youth Sailing Foundation is the clearest statement of where this club's heart lies. Launched in December 2021 around a six-boat fleet of Elliott 7-metre keelboats, it gives young sailors something most dinghy-bound programs cannot: squads in the school holidays, a winter performance squad and a development squad, all sailed in proper keelboats. The results have followed quickly. Two of its sailors, Fraser Baker and Will Gaylard, won Australian selection for the 2025 Youth Sailing World Championships, staged in Portugal, racing in the International 420 class; and Carter Baker — sailing for CYCSA and Lacepede Bay — was named the 2024 South Australian Youth Sailor of the Year. Adults are not left out: the club runs the Australian Sailing Keelboat Scheme as its learn-to-sail introduction for grown-ups, and its She Sails courses give women a women-only keelboat environment. The club also partners with the Adelaide University Sailing Club, and with the Elliott fleet, to widen opportunities for younger sailors, a collaboration the Governor noted when opening the 2025/26 season. Competition sharpens the teaching: the Fred Neill Memorial Match Racing Regatta each year is contested in Elliott 7s by teams of four or five, with entry at $500 in 2025, delivering exactly the kind of tight, tactical racing that builds skills fast. Women's racing is a further strength — the club co-hosts the South Australian Women's Keelboat Regatta at North Haven, which ran for the fourth time in 2025 and is, by the Governor's account, the second largest women's regatta in the country. Women's helm racing also features in the regular program alongside keelboat racing, cruising and the club's inshore and offshore fixtures.
Sailing waters
Gulf St Vincent has been this club's racetrack for more than half a century. From its North Haven base, close to the Port River entrance, the club sends fleets inshore and offshore across the gulf, running keelboat racing, women's helm events and a cruising program through the season. The fixture that defines its waters is the Adelaide to Port Lincoln Yacht Race, in which the club holds the organising role: a passage across Gulf St Vincent and into Spencer Gulf that local sailing guides regard as South Australia's foremost ocean race. The inaugural running came in 1950, when W. Harris's Seevogel took line honours in 19 hours, 39 minutes and 36 seconds, and the race now serves as the overture to the Lincoln Week Regatta, first held in 1976. February brings the Adelaide to Port Lincoln regatta itself, while the club's other major fixtures — the Great Southern Regatta, the SA AUDI IRC Championship, the Musto Offshore series, and the Premier's Cup Regatta, which mysailing.com.au credits with the state's most sought-after IRC trophy — keep the gulf busy through the calendar. Ashore, the geography is equally purposeful. The club's 36-hectare footprint runs from the inner breakwater through North Haven harbour to Lady Gowrie Drive, and because the land and water are held in freehold through a unit trust, the marina functions as a genuine ownership community rather than a tenancy. As of 2022, some 580 senior members held berths along with their voting rights. Opening Day, on the last Saturday of October, marks the formal start of each season on these waters, and in 2025 the Governor herself did the honours.
Club history
Incorporated on 1 May 1973, the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia was the vision of three men — Arthur Carolan, Dick Fidock AO and Malcolm Kinnaird AO — all of whom would become life members of what they built. North Haven, on the Le Fevre Peninsula, gave the new club room to grow, and grow it did: the freehold model its founders embedded, holding land and water through a unit trust, let members own their berths outright and gave the club an asset base few sailing organisations anywhere can match. By 2022 it counted 580 berth-owning senior members, and its marina had grown to 240 berths for craft up to 22 metres plus 150 hardstanding spaces, later expanded by a further 74 berths, some accommodating boats of 35 metres. The club's race-organising credentials run deep: it has long held the organising role for the Adelaide to Port Lincoln Yacht Race, a fixture first sailed in 1950 — predating the club itself by more than two decades — and now the gateway to the Lincoln Week Regatta, which began in 1976. Its offshore record reached its height with three Sydney Hobart winners from its own ranks: SAP Ausmaid in 2000, Two True in 2009 and Secret Men's Business in 2010. Members Mary-Ann Harvey and Andrew Lloyd added a divisional win in the same race with their Sydney 38 Clockwork, a boat that also campaigned at Hamilton Island Race Week and the Geelong Festival of Sail. In December 2021 the club invested in its future, launching the Youth Sailing Foundation around a six-boat fleet of Elliott 7s. Leadership renewed again around September 2025, when Andrew Saies was elected Commodore, succeeding Mike Holmes, and the following month the Governor opened the 2025/26 season.