About
Empire Bay Marina at a glance
Older-style charming marina on Cockle Bay, Brisbane Water, with fuel and a slipway; one of a cluster of marinas in Hardys Bay, Booker Bay and Empire Bay serving the Central Coast boating community.
Service area: Central Coast
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Empire Bay Marina
- Region
- Central Coast
- Water body
- Cockle Bay, Brisbane Water
- Berth types
- permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- fuel
- slipway
- shipwright
- mechanical & engineering
- antifouling & painting
- hardstand
- diesel & petrol fuel berth (historic)
- demolished October 2023
- site closed
About Empire Bay Marina
For most of the twentieth century the timber boatshed at 16B Sorrento Road was the maritime heart of Empire Bay, standing over the Cockle Bay channel on Brisbane Water with its jetties, slipway rails and fuel bowsers. A permissive occupancy for a boatshed was granted on the site in 1924, commercial operation was approved from 1949, and for the last four decades of its life the marina was run by a single tenant family. The shed was locally heritage listed and regarded across the district as an important component of the waterfront precinct; the last operator in more than 135 years of ferry services on Brisbane Water, Central Coast Ferries, relied on the boatshed's facilities to keep its daily Empire Bay, Davistown, Saratoga and Woy Woy run going. That long story ended hard. Crown Lands issued orders to stop unsafe activity in 2020 after a building assessment found structural defects, revoked the marina licence that September and took possession of the site. A grass-roots campaign led by the Empire Bay Heritage Boat Shed Association drew more than two hundred people to a waterfront rally in November 2022 and won speeches in State Parliament, but the shed and jetties were demolished in October 2023 under a Central Coast Council demolition order. The site is now vacant Crown land behind temporary fencing, its underground fuel tanks removed, with contamination investigations under way under a Voluntary Management Proposal with the NSW EPA. Boaties on Cockle Bay now look to Booker Bay, Killcare and Andersons Boat Shed for the services the old shed once gave.
Marina facilities
In its working years Empire Bay Marina offered the classic country boatshed service set. Refuelling was from two 5,000-litre in-ground tanks dispensing diesel and unleaded petrol to boats at the jetty. A rail slipway ran from the hardstand into the Cockle Channel and hauled vessels for antifouling, with defouling by scraping and jet washing done over a concrete wash-down bay that drained through a solids settlement pit. The trades on site covered shipwright repairs, mechanical and engineering work, detailing and painting, so a Brisbane Water boat could realistically be fuelled, slipped, recoated and engine-serviced at the one address. Two jetties served the water side, one supporting the marina shed. All of this has now gone. The underground storage tanks failed integrity testing in 2018 and the last tank was removed in 2019; the boatshed, jetties and remaining petroleum infrastructure were demolished and removed in October 2023, leaving only pilings, slipway rails and the old ramp visible at low water. Contamination studies commissioned by Crown Lands found tributyltin, heavy metals and some asbestos and PFAS around the slipway and shed footprints, with sediment impacts largely delineated within about 20 metres of the shoreline, and remediation options including a return to public open space are being assessed. Practical alternatives nearby include Booker Bay Marina and Central Coast Marina at Booker Bay for fuel and shipwright work, Killcare Marina with 29 berths, 12 swing moorings and a free public ship-to-shore pump-out, and Machans Marina near the Rip Bridge for fuel. Crown records show the 1997 licence authorised a commercial marina, boatshed, slipway, hardstand, fuel storage and boat repairs, sales and service, confirming how broad the operation was at its peak.
Local sailing knowledge
Cockle Bay is a side arm of Brisbane Water reached by the channel running east of Rileys Island, opposite the entrance to Woy Woy Channel. The reach is comfortably navigable as far as the marina site, but the channel shoals noticeably east of the old shed, enough to restrict deeper-keel yachts; shallow-draft boats that clear the banks can continue into Cockle Broadwater, whose confining overhead cable was removed years ago. The main constraint on the whole waterway is the Rip Bridge at the entrance, with 17.4 metres headway at high water springs, and the entrance bar and channel from Broken Bay demand low swell and a rising tide at least three hours old. Tidal streams run hard around Half Tide Rocks and under the bridge, then ease up Paddy's Channel; tide times advance from about 40 minutes after Fort Denison at the Rip Bridge to roughly two and a half hours at Gosford, and the range halves by the Broad Water. Holding through Brisbane Water is excellent mud once you are outside the weed line, which ends around three metres, and there are 24-hour courtesy moorings at Hardys Bay and Saratoga West. Ashore, Empire Bay is a quiet village with a 24-hour United Petroleum outlet on Empire Bay Drive for jerry-can fuel, while the ferry to Woy Woy puts railway shopping within reach without a car. The demolished shed's fate remains a live local issue, and visiting boats should treat the fenced foreshore and remaining pilings as a works site, keeping well clear of the silt screens around the old slipway channel.