Marina service
Royal Motor Yacht Club Woollahra (Rose Bay)
About
Royal Motor Yacht Club Woollahra (Rose Bay) at a glance
Licensed club on Wunulla Road, Rose Bay, immediately west of Point Piper Marina, with about 90 floating berths (boats to ~20 m) and 18 swing moorings plus clubhouse and parking.
Service area: Sydney Harbour
- Marina type
- commercial club
- Operator
- Royal Motor Yacht Club of NSW
- Region
- Sydney Harbour
- Water body
- Sydney Harbour (Rose Bay / Woollahra Point)
- Wet berths
- 90
- Berth types
- permanent berthing, casual berthing, swing moorings
Facilities and services
- licensed club
- restaurant/cafe
- power & water
- licensed clubhouse restaurant and bar Wed-Sun
- members gym
- Zest function venue
- 18 swing moorings
- members parking
About Royal Motor Yacht Club Woollahra (Rose Bay)
On Wunulla Road at the western corner of Rose Bay, the Royal Motor Yacht Club occupies one of the most envied waterfront positions in the eastern suburbs, its floating marina spread across the bay in front of a clubhouse that looks north over the water to the harbour heads. The club is the original seat of royal motor yachting in New South Wales: the Motor Yacht Club of NSW was established at Rose Bay in the 1920s, received royal patronage under King George V, and seeded the famous Broken Bay branch at Newport in 1927. Now trading as the Royal Motor Yacht Club NSW at Point Piper, it remains first and foremost a members' powerboat club, with around 90 floating berths accommodating vessels to roughly 20 metres and 18 swing moorings beyond. The scale of the marina relative to the clubhouse is striking; from the promenade the rows of cruisers dominate this end of the bay. Inside, the club runs the familiar licensed-club formula: restaurant and bar trading Wednesday to Sunday, a gym, function spaces hired out through Zest Waterfront Venues for weddings and corporate events, and parking alongside Wunulla Road. Its neighbours define the precinct: Point Piper Marina 150 metres to the south, Rose Bay Marina beyond it, and Woollahra Sailing Club across the bay. For motor boat owners who want a social club attached to their berth rather than a purely commercial marina, this is one of Sydney's longest-established options. The royal warrant, granted when the club was barely a few seasons old, still anchors its identity.
Marina facilities
The marina itself comprises about 90 floating pontoon berths, sized mainly for motor cruisers up to around 20 metres, supplemented by 18 club swing moorings. Permanent berthing is the core business, allocated to members, with casual berthing available when pens are free; visiting members of reciprocal clubs can sometimes be accommodated by arrangement. Power and water run to the berths, and members access the marina around the clock. There is no fuel berth at the club; fuelling is done at Rose Bay Marina's diesel dock a few hundred metres east, which also provides the area's free sewage pump-out, so club members effectively share the precinct's service infrastructure. Nor is there a slipway or boatyard on site, with maintenance handled by trades attending the berth or at outside yards. The clubhouse supplies what the marina does not: a licensed restaurant and bar open Wednesday through Sunday over the water, the Whaler-style club rooms typical of Sydney's boating clubs, function catering by Zest for events of up to large wedding scale, and a members' gym fitted with modern equipment. Parking for members sits beside the building on Wunulla Road, with guaranteed spaces for event bookings. Berth fees are bundled into the membership structure rather than advertised commercially, consistent with the club model, and demand for pens at this address is perennial. The practical distinction from the commercial marinas next door is ownership of the experience: the berth comes with a bar, a dining room and a hundred years of club tradition attached.
Local sailing knowledge
Wunulla Road runs along the shore at the south-western corner of Rose Bay, and the club sits at the point where the residential streetscape of Point Piper meets the public foreshore of Rose Bay Park. Navigation into the bay is simple: deep water right up to the mooring field, no bar, no bridge, with the only cautions being the density of moored and berthed boats and the seaplane operations at Lyne Park to the east. The club's berths lie in the lee of the peninsula, well protected from the north-easter that roughens the outer bay on summer afternoons. Small-craft traffic is constant: rowing shells use the shoreline 'runway' in all weather, dragon boats train midweek, and kayaks launch from the beach and storage pavilion in Rose Bay Park. Rose Bay ferry wharf and the Lyne Park playground are a ten-minute walk east, and Double Bay's village shops lie just beyond. The club's own history threads through Sydney's motor boating story: from the Rose Bay parent club grew the Pittwater branch that became the Royal Motor Yacht Club Broken Bay, and the royal warrant granted in the late 1920s still anchors the club's identity. Membership draws heavily from the surrounding peninsula suburbs, where waterfront houses with private jetties line Wunulla Road, and the bar on a summer Friday is as much neighbourhood institution as yacht club. Visiting skippers should remember the 4-knot zone around the marinas and the give-way etiquette around seaplanes and rowers. Cranbrook School sits directly opposite on New South Head Road, and its rowing sheds feed the morning traffic of eights along the seawall.