Marine services in Phillip Bay

Sailing club

The name tells you where this club came from; the building tells you where it's been. Yarra Bay 16ft Skiff Sailing Club has stood on the sand at Yarra Bay, near La Perouse on Botany Bay's northern shore, since 1928 — one of the traditional skiff clubs of Sydney's south. The 16-footers no longer race here, their costs and the rise of smaller dinghy classes having thinned the fleet decades ago, but the sailing continues through two volunteer-run divisions, senior and junior, sharing one of the most storied stretches of water in Australian skiff racing. What makes Yarra Bay unusual is the hybrid it has become. The clubhouse is a licensed community venue open seven days, home to the Csalt on the Beach restaurant and bistro — a refurbished hundred-seat dining room — plus the Beach Bar, a 180-seat function auditorium, TAB and Sky Channel, Keno, trivia, raffles and a popular Sunday afternoon live music session, with a courtesy bus running Thursday to Sunday. That hospitality operation underwrites the sailing: members of the public come for lunch with a view over the bay, and the proceeds keep a small sailing club viable on a metropolitan beachfront. The club's own history insists the at