About
Shellharbour Marina at a glance
270-berth marina at 13 Marina Drive, Shell Cove, the boating gateway to the NSW South Coast, with fuel and a waterfront precinct including Woolworths, cafes, chemist, bakery and bottle shop. Haul-out facilities completed in 2024; hosted the MIA Dockhand Course launch in 2025.
Service area: Illawarra
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Shellharbour Marina
- Region
- Illawarra
- Water body
- Shell Cove (Tasman Sea)
- Wet berths
- 270
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- fuel
- restaurant/cafe
- chandlery
- dry stack storage (120 boats)
- 100t straddle carrier (8.8m beam)
- boatyard (shipwright, electrical, mechanical)
- concierge
- customer lounge
- public jetty (2hr)
- channel moorings
- EV charging
- rooftop space
- pump-out
About Shellharbour Marina
Shellharbour Marina is the centrepiece of one of the longest-running development sagas in Australian local government: a 12-hectare harbour excavated from dry land at Shell Cove, on the Illawarra coast between Wollongong and Kiama. Shellharbour City Council and Frasers Property spent more than three decades on the project, shifting over a million cubic metres of soil and rock, building a 467-metre breakwater and flooding the basin before Walcon Marine installed the pontoons. Stage one opened in November 2021 with 145 berths, and the marina has since grown to its full 270-berth complement, managed by Marine Holdings Australia. The setting is unusual among Australian marinas because the harbour is entirely man-made and wrapped by The Waterfront, Shell Cove, a new town centre where a full-line Woolworths, tavern, bakery, chemist and bottle shop stand within a minute's walk of the gangways. Some 2.5 kilometres of boardwalk and promenade circle the harbour out to the breakwater ends, and Shellharbour South Beach and a netted family beach lie along the foreshore. The marina sits 50 nautical miles south of Sydney Heads and 30 north of Jervis Bay, and direct, bar-free access to the Tasman Sea through the breakwater entrance puts game fishing grounds almost literally at the marina's front door, something no other South Coast port can match. Council figures showed visitors to the precinct up almost 30 per cent year on year soon after opening, evidence that the harbour has pulled the wider Illawarra toward the water. A Crowne Plaza hotel on the waterfront has been the next addition, cementing the shift from construction site to working coastal destination.
Marina facilities
The 270 floating berths take monohulls and multihulls, with inner harbour depths around 4 metres, outer harbour water to 4.5 metres and a deeper section near 5 metres for larger vessels; berths run from under 10 metres to superyacht sizes above 30 metres. Every berth has power and water via Rolec Quantum pedestals, and both casual and permanent berthing are offered, with management holding a vacancy factor so roughly 15 to 30 berths stay available for visitors. A 35-metre dual-sided fuel pontoon dispenses diesel at 40, 80 and 160 litres per minute plus premium unleaded, and a pump-out facility sits alongside. The Marina Services Centre, opened in 2023, houses the marina office, a chandlery, concierge, private ensuite bathrooms, laundry, a customer lounge and a public rooftop space, with EV charging in the car park. The boat maintenance facility brings the yard side up to the same standard: a 120-boat dry stack, an undercover work area and a 100-tonne marine straddle carrier with an 8.8-metre beam that suits wide catamarans, backed by shipwright, marine electrical and mechanical tenancies. A public jetty allows two-hour stops for non-berthers, seven fore-and-aft channel moorings serve itinerant vessels up to around 25 metres, and anchoring inside the harbour is prohibited. In 2025 the marina hosted the launch of the Marina Industries Association Dockhand course, underlining its growing role as a training and industry hub for the region. Fuel flow rates on the pontoon are among the fastest on the coast, so even a big game boat can fill and clear the wharf quickly, and dockside service is available at the refuelling wharf. Wifi, video surveillance, ice and marina trolleys round out the day-to-day kit.
Local sailing knowledge
The approach is as simple as NSW coastal entries get: steer between the breakwaters into deep, dredged water with no bar and no tide-dependent constraints, though the entrance can carry a steep chop when a heavy easterly swell meets an ebb tide flowing out of the harbour. Once inside, the harbour is landlocked calm in any weather. Offshore, the attractions are immediate: Bushrangers Bay aquatic reserve and the Bass Point reefs, prized by divers and snorkellers, lie just south of the entrance, and the Five Islands off Wollongong are an easy run north. Jervis Bay, 30 nautical miles south, is the obvious overnight cruise, while Sydney is a comfortable daylight passage north. Game boats work the shelf waters within sight of the breakwater. Ashore, provisioning could hardly be easier, with the supermarket and bottle shop at the marina gate, and the Waterfront Tavern cantilevered over the harbour for dinner; Shellharbour Village, a few minutes away, adds restaurants and a small-boat harbour of its own. Golfers can arrange a round at The Links Shell Cove through marina staff, and surfers know Killalea, The Farm, lies just up the coast. Visiting crews should note the two-hour public jetty limit and book a berth ahead through the marina office on 02 4250 4100. By road the marina is about 110 kilometres south of the Sydney CBD and roughly 213 kilometres from Canberra, close enough that a sizeable share of berth holders come from the national capital. Kelp and crayweed beds just outside the heads make local freediving popular, and whales pass close inshore on the winter migration, often visible from the breakwater walk itself.