About
Shelley Sailing Club at a glance
Half a century after three mates turned a chance encounter on the Canning River into an impromptu race, Shelley Sailing Club is still doing exactly what it was invented for: putting Perth families onto the water in small boats on Sunday afternoons. The club sails from the Canning River foreshore off Riverton Drive at Shelley, in Perth's southern suburbs, and it has never pretended to be grander than its 1974 origins — a club that exists, as community listings put it, specifically for family sailing. The scale today is comfortable rather than corporate: a social clubroom beside the original 1981 boat store, an air-conditioned start box fitted with a fixed anemometer, a safety boat, hire Lasers owned by the club, and a canteen whose vouchers come bundled into membership. Whole-family membership runs around $530 a year with no nomination fees — deliberately low barriers for a club whose racing classes are Lasers, Windrush 14 catamarans and Scow Moths rather than anything with a keel. Shelley appears on Australian Sailing's affiliation fee schedule as a WA affiliated club in category B, and it is listed among the stakeholders in the State Government's boating strategy for the Swan-Cann
Service area: Shelley, WA
- Club type
- Dinghy
- Australian Sailing
- Affiliated · 2025-26
- Primary classes
- Dinghy
- Kids learn to sail
- Available
About Shelley Sailing Club
Half a century after three mates turned a chance encounter on the Canning River into an impromptu race, Shelley Sailing Club is still doing exactly what it was invented for: putting Perth families onto the water in small boats on Sunday afternoons. The club sails from the Canning River foreshore off Riverton Drive at Shelley, in Perth's southern suburbs, and it has never pretended to be grander than its 1974 origins — a club that exists, as community listings put it, specifically for family sailing. The scale today is comfortable rather than corporate: a social clubroom beside the original 1981 boat store, an air-conditioned start box fitted with a fixed anemometer, a safety boat, hire Lasers owned by the club, and a canteen whose vouchers come bundled into membership. Whole-family membership runs around $530 a year with no nomination fees — deliberately low barriers for a club whose racing classes are Lasers, Windrush 14 catamarans and Scow Moths rather than anything with a keel. Shelley appears on Australian Sailing's affiliation fee schedule as a WA affiliated club in category B, and it is listed among the stakeholders in the State Government's boating strategy for the Swan-Canning riverpark. In 2025 the club marked fifty years on the river with a fiftieth-anniversary edition of its signature Convict Bay Regatta — a milestone that captures the club's particular gift: turning a stretch of quiet suburban river into a small-boat sailing scene that has simply refused to fade — and showing no sign of handing that role to anyone else.
Training and sailing programs
The pathway into Shelley starts young and stays relaxed. The club's junior development program takes children from age eight, teaching them in Minnow and Mudlark dinghies on Sunday mornings — a low-pressure introduction that matches the family brief perfectly. From there the ladder continues through learn-to-sail classes offered across multiple boat types, plus formal courses and race coaching delivered under the club's Australian Sailing affiliation. Adults are anything but an afterthought: the club openly invites newcomers to come and try sailing on any Sunday from about one o'clock between October and April, and with club Lasers for hire a beginner can get afloat without owning a thing. The racing classes tell their own story about who sails here. The Laser fleet, the club notes, is crewed single-handed by men and women from fifteen years of age to past sixty, with Radial and Standard rigs suiting different body weights. The Windrush 14 is a Perth-built fourteen-foot off-the-beach catamaran and a winner of an Australian Design Award, able to be rigged cat or sloop and handled solo. The Scow Moth completes a trio that keeps costs modest and racing close. The competitive calendar runs through an Open Series from October to March with two o'clock starts, anchored by two fixtures of genuine local folklore: the Convict Bay Regatta, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2025, and the race bearing the frankly irresistible name Cock of the Canning. Under the 2024-25 committee — Commodore Riko Stevens, Secretary Chris Musto and Treasurer Andrew Currie — the whole program keeps humming along.
Sailing waters
Everything about Shelley's home water argues for the club's chosen style. The Canning River at Shelley offers the quiet, protected water of a broad suburban river — no ocean swell, a world away from exposed coastal chop — just steady reaches of open river in Perth's southern suburbs. That kind of water has practical virtues a family club exploits fully: a capsize is an inconvenience rather than an emergency, young sailors can be turned loose in Minnows within sight of the clubhouse, and race officials in the air-conditioned start box can read the breeze off the club's fixed anemometer before the first warning signal. The club's footprint sits off Riverton Drive, with the social clubroom and boat store beside the launching area, while mail goes to a Parkwood post office box. This is also carefully managed water: Shelley Sailing Club appears among the stakeholders in the State Government's boating strategy covering the Swan-Canning riverpark, sharing the river system with paddlers, rowers and power craft under a coordinated plan. Nor does the club sail in class isolation. Its classes pages map a network of sister clubs racing the same boats around the state — Maylands, Geographe Bay, Koombana Bay and Princess Royal for Lasers; for the Windrush, clubs at Walpole, Denmark, Jervoise Bay and Augusta — so a Shelley sailor who travels to a country regatta finds familiar competition waiting on the start line. It is the classic river-club bargain, struck with unusual success: modest water, used brilliantly, across fifty seasons and counting.
Club history
Shelley has preserved its foundation story in unusual detail, and it begins with a challenge. In 1974 Dr Malcolm Hoare, Tony Quayle and David Hartley happened to be sailing small craft near the Shelley ends of Beryl and Modillion Avenues when a challenge to race was issued. The impromptu contests became a habit; Roy Whitehead joined after buying a Mirror dinghy, Russell Matthews followed, and on 23 March 1975 the group held its first General Meeting, electing Tony Quayle President, Roy Whitehead Vice President, Simon Dodd Secretary and Max Birch Treasurer. Growth came immediately. The first AGM, on 21 August 1975, opened a season in which 74 boats were registered and thirty to forty of them regularly fronted for Sunday afternoon sailing; affiliation with the Yachting Association of WA followed six days later, on 27 August. Bricks and mortar took longer. Incorporation was instigated in 1979, and in June 1980 the club negotiated a licence with the City of Canning for its present site. Members built the original boatshed during the 1981 off-season — it survives as the clubhouse boat store — and Hon Clive Griffiths MLC performed the opening on 18 October 1981; a start box was later formed atop its concrete roof. The extended clubrooms arrived next, financed by a $30,000 City of Canning loan against the $10,283 members had raised by March 1994; Mayor Dr Mick Lekias declared them open on 9 October that year. Three decades on, the club celebrated fifty years on the Canning in 2025, centring the occasion on a golden-anniversary Convict Bay Regatta — the same fixture that has anchored its calendar for as long as most members can remember.