Marine services in Mooloolaba

Sailing club

Mooloolaba Yacht Club prints its priorities in three words — "Sailing, Fun and Friendship" — and that motto has carried the club from its 1967 founding to its present place at the centre of Sunshine Coast keelboat racing. Affiliated with Australian Sailing and based in the marina precinct at Mooloolaba, it is a yacht club in the literal sense: the emphasis falls on keelboats rather than off-the-beach dinghies, and the calendar mixes serious ocean-racing business with an unusually strong social program. The club serves as finishing authority and welcoming party for the Sydney to Mooloolaba Yacht Race, one of the classic east-coast passage races, a duty it has performed since the race's finish shifted north in 1973. It also organises the town's Christmas Boat Parade, which says much about how embedded the club is in local life beyond the start line. The achievement that has drawn the widest attention, though, is its women's keelboat pathway. What began in 2017 as a skills development program has grown into the Mooloolaba Women's Keelboat Regatta, which took out the national SheSails Award at Australian Sailing's 2022 awards night — recognition from the sport's governing body that the