Sailing club
Royal Motor Yacht Club Broken Bay
About
Royal Motor Yacht Club Broken Bay at a glance
Premier licensed club at 46 Prince Alfred Parade, Newport, with ~269 berths (max berth 55 m), superyacht berthing for 30-55 m vessels, high-flow fuel, 100 t slipway, boat ramp, heated pool and a la carte restaurant; Superyacht Ready accredited.
Service area: Pittwater
- Club type
- Yacht Club (mixed keelboat+dinghy)
- Australian Sailing
- Affiliated · 2025-26
- Primary classes
- Yacht Club (mixed keelboat+dinghy)
About Royal Motor Yacht Club Broken Bay
From its waterfront at Horseshoe Cove, Newport, the Royal Motor Yacht Club Broken Bay commands one of the finest positions on Pittwater — the drowned-valley estuary that opens north into Broken Bay and the Hawkesbury River system. Founded in 1926 as a branch of the Motor Yacht Club of NSW, it has grown from a semi-rural boating outpost into a multi-division club that Pittwater Online News counts among Australia's leading yacht clubs. The divisions read like a map of the boating life: Sail Racing, Sail Cruising, Cruiser, Game Fishing, Multihull, Timber and Classic Boat, Mini Mariners for the kids, and a large Social division for members who own no boat at all. Sailors know the club above all for its Monday twilight series, which the club describes as regularly drawing around seventy entrants across several divisions — one of the largest twilight fleets in the Southern Hemisphere by the club's own account. The annual Pantaenius Newport to Coffs Harbour race gives the calendar an offshore spine, while fixtures such as the Australia Day Boating Parade, the Club Picnic Day at The Basin, the Classic Yacht Regatta each March and the Scotland Island SUP race stitch the club into Pittwater life. Since the swimming pool opened in 1959 the club has happily answered to the nickname "the family Club", and the description still fits: heated pool and play park, a free member shuttle running between Church Point and Avalon, three bars and the Salt Cove restaurant trading seven days. Community duty runs deep as well — the club has long housed what is now Marine Rescue Broken Bay.
Training and sailing programs
Mini Mariners is where the club's youngest members get their start — a division created by volunteer parents and now in its eighth year, giving children ideally aged six to fourteen, and their families, water-safety skills in what the club calls "a safe, social, fun and non-competitive atmosphere". It is a deliberately gentle entry point, more about confidence around boats than racing craft, and it reflects the family-first character the club has cultivated since the 1950s. Formal accredited dinghy courses are left to neighbouring training centres on Pittwater; this club's strength is the on-ramp from family boating into its vast racing and cruising program. And that program is vast. The Sailing Division runs more than a hundred around-the-buoy races a season, split between spinnaker and non-spinnaker fleets, with an open invitation to newcomers: "join us for a sail or register as a crew member". The Monday Twilight "no extras" series — no spinnakers, no complications — attracts around seventy entrants in several divisions on a typical evening, while the Broken Bay Islands Series adds a friendly rivalry among members' boats across the estuary's landmarks. The Top Hat Sailing Division, a club institution, meets monthly — generally the first Saturday — and races in two fleets, drawing on a published set of twenty-three courses that use Pittwater and Broken Bay marks from Lion Island to Towlers Bay and Long Nose Point. For those who prefer horizons to buoys, the Sail Cruising Division organises weekends away, coastal passages, raft-ups and barbecues across the Pittwater and Hawkesbury. Add the Newport to Coffs race each autumn, and the pathway from Mini Mariner to offshore sailor is all there.
Sailing waters
Pittwater is the gift here. The club sits at 46 Prince Alfred Parade, Newport, on the western shore of the estuary at Horseshoe Cove, facing the gateway to Broken Bay and the Hawkesbury River — a waterway the club describes, with pardonable pride, as "arguably one of the most beautiful boating waterways in the world". North of the Newport arm the estuary opens into Broken Bay itself, with Lion Island standing sentinel at the meeting of the Hawkesbury and the sea, and the club's race courses make full use of the geography: Lion Island, Rocky Point, Juno Point, Long Nose Point, Mackerel Beach, Stokes Point, Soldiers Point, Towlers Bay and Taylors Point all appear on the Top Hat course card. The shore-side plant matches the water. The club's marina, described by its Game Fishing division as international class with 256 berths, is backed by a 100-tonne slipway along with fuel and pump-out facilities, boat-owner tenders and marine trade services on site. Ashore there are three bars — the Garden Bar, Mariners Bar and Level 1 Lounge Bar — plus the Salt Cove on Pittwater restaurant open seven days, a heated swimming pool and children's play park, and a free member shuttle bus covering a five-kilometre radius from Church Point to Avalon. Racing happens on Pittwater and out into Broken Bay, with the big twilight fleets starting within sight of the clubhouse and the offshore Newport to Coffs fleet leaving the estuary behind entirely. For a cruising sailor, few clubs anywhere offer a more practical base: deep water, full services, and the whole Hawkesbury system at the front gate.
Club history
On an October evening in 1926, a large gathering at the Motor Yacht Club of NSW's Rose Bay clubhouse voted to establish a Broken Bay branch. Twenty-six foundation members enrolled, with Mr N. Light of Newport as honorary branch secretary. The first event ran on 20 November 1926, and the branch's opening season decided twenty-five races — eight of them for ladies — with prizes shared between eleven boats. Land at Horseshoe Cove, Newport, still the club's home, was bought in early 1927; that same year King George V conferred the Royal prefix on the parent club — the first motor yacht club anywhere in the Empire to receive it — and the branch became the Royal Motor Yacht Club, its members entitled to fly the defaced Blue Ensign. A. C. Cooke was the first branch commodore; within nine months membership neared a hundred. The official opening of a clubhouse, boat shed, wharf and slipway followed on 17 March 1928, and Governor Sir Dudley de Chair, a former Royal Navy admiral, proved a warm patron. The decades since have tested and rebuilt the club. Fire destroyed that first building; its replacement stood further back from the seawall, and a 1939 land purchase on the eastern side, for two hundred dollars, took the waterfrontage to about five hundred feet. Wartime petrol rationing curtailed pleasure boating, and many sizeable member cruisers went into Naval Auxiliary Patrol service. The pool opened on 15 March 1959 with membership at 354 active members, and the "family Club" era began; a new lounge deck and bar followed in 1964, and the current clubhouse — built around its predecessor under Commodore Alan Leslie — was opened by Lady Cutler on 17 August 1968. In 2026 the club celebrates its centenary: an official opening, a Centenary Ball and a boat parade from Rose Bay to Broken Bay.