Marine services in Baringhup

Sailing club

Sailing in goldfields country has its own logic, and Cairn Curran Sailing Club embodies it. Based at Baringhup on the reservoir of the same name, near the historic town of Maldon in central Victoria, this is a small, volunteer-run inland club whose stated purposes are disarmingly direct: encourage recreational and competitive sailing, and run regattas. What it lacks in size it has repeatedly made up in pedigree. During the 1960s and 1970s the club stood among the most successful inland Victorian outfits in the Australian Sailfish class, producing a string of state and national titleholders from water impounded behind a dam wall on the Loddon River. That competitive instinct survives. The club's late-November off-the-beach regatta anchors its season, and its willingness to step up is well documented — in 2020 it rescued the Tasar state titles at short notice when the planned venue at Yarrawonga fell through. Local flavour runs deep here. The 2014 Fireball Victorian Championship, sailed in gusts up to 30 knots, ran as part of the "Cairn Curran Classic" with sponsorship from Chapple's Cairn Curran Estate winery, and long-time Fireball sailor Arthur "Smiley" Chapple remains part of the