Marine services in Bunbury

Sailing club

The judges of Western Australia's 2021 Sailing Club of the Year award could hardly have missed the numbers coming out of Bunbury: membership up 114 per cent, an expanded junior program, and two women — Commodore Sarah Twigger, with Deri Price as her Vice Commodore — running the show. Koombana Bay Sailing Club took the honour, and the citation's emphasis on inclusive opportunity captured what this volunteer-run South West club had been quietly building for years. By 2022 the roll stood at 496 members, 189 of them social members whom the club actively encourages onto the water through SailPass, Australian Sailing's introductory membership. What distinguishes Koombana Bay from many regional clubs is breadth. Under one burgee it fields keelboats, catamarans and off-the-beach dinghies, all racing under handicap, and its Saturday program splits into four classes so that juniors in training dinghies, senior dinghy sailors, cat crews and keelboat teams each get meaningful competition. The keelboat scene is built around the S80, a Swarbrick design of eight metres familiar across WA waters, racing alongside bigger cruiser-racers, while the catamaran fleet carries a long Nacra tradition that