Marine services in Greenwich

Sailing club

At the foot of Bay Street in Greenwich, where Gore Creek Bay opens toward the Lane Cove River, stands a club born from an argument. Greenwich Flying Squadron was founded in 1924 as a breakaway from the Lane Cove 12ft Sailing Skiff Club, its founders insisting on "best and best" rigs — sail area unrestricted within the skiff hull dimension rules — and its first race was sailed on 14 February of that year. A century on, the squadron celebrated its hundredth birthday in 2024 with a twilight race that put an original 12ft skiff on show, the prizes echoing that first contest. What the modern club does is unusual for Sydney: it runs genuine dinghy sailing for juniors and serious yacht racing for adults out of the same historic boatshed, one of the very few clubs on the harbour catering to both. Sabots and Lasers share the calendar with yachts up to forty feet, weekend racing runs year-round, and Wednesday twilight racing in daylight saving splits the fleet into six colour-coded divisions with a course sheet to match. The newsletter is called "Humbug", after the harbour reach the courses often sail. The squadron's keelboat credentials are contemporary, not nostalgic — club crews Chris O

Sailing club

One suburb, two sailing clubs — and the confusion is understandable. Greenwich Sailing Club at Manns Point, established in 1938, is not the Greenwich Flying Squadron at Bay Street Wharf, founded fourteen years earlier. The distinction is worth making plainly: where the Squadron pairs yacht racing with a Sabot junior program, Greenwich Sailing Club is an amateur off-the-beach dinghy club administered by the sailors themselves alongside their families and friends, with junior sailing at the centre of everything it does. The two neighbours coexist happily, but they are different institutions with different histories. GSC describes itself as friendly and family-oriented, drawing members from all over Sydney, and its rhythm is simple: Sunday-afternoon racing from September to March, with the club open from ten in the morning and briefing around one. The Sunday fleets tell the club's story — Optimists and O'pen Skiffs for the juniors, Flying 11s, Lasers and 29ers further up the age ladder — and a busy social program rounds out the season. Membership spans beginners through to the most competitive racers, and the club reports its sailors regularly compete at state, national and world cha