Marine services in Springhurst

Sailing club

"We sail on land & water" — the motto is a survival story compressed into five words. When this club's lake was drained out from under it in 2010, it refused to die; it bought a land yacht instead. Today North East Windsport Club is one of the very few Australian clubs where a member can race a dinghy on a mountain lake one weekend and a Blokart at 50 km/h down a Gippsland beach the next, and it fields the biggest team in the country at the national Blokart championships. The membership is scattered across the entire north east — Wangaratta, Benalla, Beechworth, Wandiligong, Albury, Yarrawonga, Echuca, even Paynesville on the Gippsland coast — which makes the club less a local fixture than a regional network. Commodore Ken Horne, who built the trophies for the 2025 nationals with the Wangaratta Men's Shed, typifies the hands-on culture. Fees are deliberately modest: $180 for a family, $20 social, $10 day membership for visitors, with a "remote" category for those living more than 80 kilometres away. Hand-steered Blokarts give the club an inclusive edge that matters: people with lower-limb disabilities can compete on genuinely equal terms, one of land sailing's quiet strengths. Ad