Marine services in Mount Eliza

Sailing club

"The Jewel on the Bay" is the tagline Davey's Bay Yacht Club gives itself, and for once the small club's self-assessment is widely echoed by those who sail against it. Tucked into a sheltered cove at Mount Eliza on Port Phillip's eastern shore, it is among the oldest yacht clubs in Victoria, founded in 1909, and it has spent more than a century demonstrating that size and achievement are loosely related. From this compact membership have come state, national and world titleholders, plus three Olympians — among them Jenni Lidgett, who crewed with Addy Bucek in the 470 at Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996. The club's soul, though, belongs to one boat above all: the Flying Fifteen, the Uffa Fox-designed sports keelboat that dominates its senior fleet, launches from the club's two cranes, and brought the Australian championship to this little bay over the 2012–13 new year. Around that keelboat core runs a busy off-the-beach scene — Optimists and OziOptis for the juniors, Pacers for training and racing, with Sabres, 420s, Fireballs, ILCAs and even Finns regularly afloat, plus room for sailboards, paddle boards and kayaks. The weekly rhythm is distinctive: Friday evenings and Sundays

Sailing club

Dinghy in Mount Eliza, VIC.

Sailing club

Few sailing clubs anywhere operate inside a streetscape drawn up by the architects of Canberra. Ranelagh Yacht Squadron is the on-water arm of the Ranelagh Club at Mount Eliza, a private multi-sport and social club that occupies part of a 1920s estate designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. The sailing squadron shares its home with tennis courts, a licenced bar and lounge with a fireplace, and a restaurant looking out over Port Phillip Bay, and the wider club counts around 2,000 members — a mix of young families, working professionals and retired couples, with private access to Ranelagh Beach below the clubhouse. The squadron itself is deliberately broad in outlook. Alongside dinghy sailors it welcomes kayakers, stand-up paddle boarders, windsurfers, swimmers and the volunteers who drive the safety boats, which makes it less a hardcore racing outfit than a beach-and-water activities community with sailing at its centre. Supervised sessions, safety cover and a genuine pathway for children give it a family-first feel, and the club's own planning documents with the shire recognise "Ranelagh Club incl. Ranelagh Yacht Squadron" as a key user group of this stretch o