Marine services in Northbridge

Sailing club

Some clubs guard their patch of harbour jealously; Northbridge Sailing Club simply got on with quietly producing some of the most influential sailing design the country has seen. Tucked at the end of Sailors Bay Road on upper Middle Harbour, it is a small community club where the membership spans from five-year-olds to sailors in their seventies and beyond, ranging in temperament from thoroughly laid back to fiercely competitive. Local press has called it "one of Sydney Harbour's best kept secrets", and the club itself talks about friendships formed on the clubhouse deck and on regatta road trips lasting a lifetime. Parents like the healthy outdoor environment away from screens; teenagers relish the freedom of an informal club that trusts them with boats. Then there is the name on the street sign. The club's address is 1 Bethwaite Lane, renamed in honour of the family that made this place matter far beyond Willoughby. Frank Bethwaite — DFC, later OAM, and a 2020 inductee into the Australian Sailing Hall of Fame — was a member from 1959, and the NS14 dinghy was conceived in a clubhouse conversation here before evolving into the Nova and then the Tasar, of which around 3,000 have be