Hamilton Island Yacht Club

About

Local details at a glance

Few sailing clubs anywhere operate like Hamilton Island Yacht Club. Run by the Oatley family via its company Hamilton Island Enterprises, it functions without flag officers or committees, and per Sailing World its membership in 2014 stood at about twenty-five people — prompting the magazine to call it "quite obviously not your average club". Bob Oatley, the family patriarch, held the title of commodore. What the club lacks in member numbers it makes up in architectural presence. The clubhouse on the marina's edge, created by architect Walter Barda, drawing on ideas from yachtsman Iain Murray, wears a billowing copper roof shaped like a sail, its palette drawn from full sails and the colours of the reef, and it has been likened so often to the Sydney Opera House that one travel outlet dubbed it the Opera House of far north Queensland. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh officially opened the building in August 2009, during Audi Hamilton Island Race Week. That regatta is the club's reason for being: Hamilton Island Race Week, held each August and described by Boat International as Australia's largest offshore keelboat regatta, runs from the club's marina-front base. Behind the architectu

Service area: Hamilton Island, QLD