Sailing club
Vincentia Sailing Club
About
Vincentia Sailing Club at a glance
Catamaran sailors across New South Wales have learned to circle the ANZAC long weekend in their calendars, because that is when Vincentia Sailing Club runs the Jervis Bay Classic, its signature regatta and the closer of the regular sailing season. The 2026 edition, only the third running, drew seventy-one boats across five divisions and doubled as both the F16 Australian Championship and the closing round of the state Hobie association's Traveller Series. That rapid rise says much about the club: a young, volunteer-run, overwhelmingly catamaran-focused outfit on the western shore of Jervis Bay that has become, in a handful of seasons, one of the country's most talked-about multihull venues. Its fleet rolls off the tongue of any beach-cat sailor: Hobies, F18s, Nacras, A-Class and Taipans, with all off-the-beach classes welcomed. The ties to the national Hobie community run deep. The club hosted the 54th Hobie Cat Nationals across the 2026-27 new year, with rescue boat support from neighbouring Jervis Bay Sailing Club and Canberra Yacht Club, plus the Hobie WaveGP Championships as the Traveller Series opener. Local identity Paddy Butler serves as president and publicity officer of t
Service area: Vincentia, NSW
- Club type
- Dinghy
- Australian Sailing
- Affiliated · 2025-26
- Primary classes
- Dinghy
- Kids learn to sail
- Available
About Vincentia Sailing Club
Catamaran sailors across New South Wales have learned to circle the ANZAC long weekend in their calendars, because that is when Vincentia Sailing Club runs the Jervis Bay Classic, its signature regatta and the closer of the regular sailing season. The 2026 edition, only the third running, drew seventy-one boats across five divisions and doubled as both the F16 Australian Championship and the closing round of the state Hobie association's Traveller Series. That rapid rise says much about the club: a young, volunteer-run, overwhelmingly catamaran-focused outfit on the western shore of Jervis Bay that has become, in a handful of seasons, one of the country's most talked-about multihull venues. Its fleet rolls off the tongue of any beach-cat sailor: Hobies, F18s, Nacras, A-Class and Taipans, with all off-the-beach classes welcomed. The ties to the national Hobie community run deep. The club hosted the 54th Hobie Cat Nationals across the 2026-27 new year, with rescue boat support from neighbouring Jervis Bay Sailing Club and Canberra Yacht Club, plus the Hobie WaveGP Championships as the Traveller Series opener. Local identity Paddy Butler serves as president and publicity officer of the Australian National Hobie Class Association. Its self-declared title is "Jervis Bay's Home of the Best Breeze", paired with a pitch aimed squarely at the week-weary: tired of the daily grind, come join us. Youth and female helms get their own trophies at the Classic, with Emma Webb and Bridget Bolewski among recent recipients, and visitors consistently single out the volunteer crew for putting on, in one report's words, a show like no other.
Training and sailing programs
Youth development has its own dedicated sub-committee inside the club's governance structure, sitting alongside the sailing, clubhouse development and regatta committees, which shows a club that treats junior growth as an ongoing program rather than an annual afterthought. The Australian Sailing club directory lists kids' learn-to-sail among the club's offerings, and the venue itself does half the coaching: the surrounding headlands block the ocean swell, producing sheltered conditions that tourism and club sources alike describe as well suited to training and recreational sailing through the year. Detailed course structures, Tackers branding and Discover Sailing Centre accreditation are not published, but the ingredients are on the record: protected water, a teaching-friendly beach, and a membership structure with family, adult, youth and even non-sailing social categories to hold newcomers once they arrive. Weekly club racing is the backbone for everyone past the beginner stage. Spring, Summer and Autumn handicap series and club championship series keep the fleet sharpening itself for most of the year, and because the regular fleet spans Hobie Cats, F18s, Nacras, A-Class cats and Taipans, a developing sailor can watch genuinely quick boats up close every weekend. The regatta calendar compounds the effect: sailors who learn their craft in club races find themselves sharing start lines with national-title fields each April at the Jervis Bay Classic, an apprenticeship most clubs cannot offer. Event volunteering functions as an unofficial training stream too. With a regatta coordinator, race officer and sailing committee coordinator among the office bearers, and major events requiring rescue crews, mark layers and starters, members gain race-management experience that feeds back into the quality of the weekly series.
Sailing waters
Plantation Point juts into the western side of Jervis Bay, and the club's base at 44 Plantation Point Parade occupies one of the prettiest launching spots on the whole bay. Rigging takes place on the grassed reserve above the beach, and boats launch across a short stretch of sand, wading out through shallow water over a sandy bottom into clear, sheltered sailing water. The elevated grass near the Barfleur Beach side of the point is the pick of the spectator spots, and short-course racing directly off Huskisson, one town around the bay, delivers what regatta reports call a full-on spectator experience. The bay itself is the drawcard. The club describes its waterway as unpolluted and uncrowded, shared with sea eagles, dolphins and whales, and the facts support the colour: Jervis Bay Marine Park wraps the area, bottlenose dolphins are regulars, and migrating humpbacks pass offshore in season. The club's sailing directions even carry the Dhurga names for the local winds, acknowledging the Wodi-Wandandian of the Yuin Nation: Baliya, the summer north-easterly sea breeze that is the bay's bread and butter, and Miringama, the refreshing south-easterly that often heralds the cool change. Afternoon breezes frequently strengthen after midday in the warmer months, and strong southerly changes can rough the bay up quickly, a combination that keeps race officers honest. Racing areas span the water locals call Moona Moona, with courses set off Plantation Point, Huskisson, Long Beach and Callala; in a nor'easter the Callala Run course comes out. The club sits roughly two and a half to three hours from Sydney and about three from Canberra, with Huskisson's cafes and the Jervis Bay Brewing Co close enough to serve as the unofficial post-race debrief rooms.
Club history
For a club whose founding year remains unpublished, Vincentia has written a striking amount of history in a short time. Its constitution dates from September 2021, and the record since then is essentially a highlight reel of big-event hosting. The Jervis Bay Classic, run on the ANZAC long weekend, reached its third edition in 2026 with seventy-one boats of all shapes and sizes closing out the season. That running carried extra weight: the F16 class chose it for its Australian Championship, eleven boats strong, and the NSW Hobie Cat Association made it the finale of its 2025-26 Traveller Series. The Classic gets underway each ANZAC Day via the Round the Bay Rally, a passage-style race of genuine distance around the cardinal marks of the bay, a format that mixes festival sailing with real navigation. Between Classics, the club hosted the 54th Hobie Cat Nationals from late December 2026 into January 2027, drawing on rescue boat support from Jervis Bay Sailing Club and Canberra Yacht Club, and ran the Hobie WaveGP Championships as the September opener of the state Traveller Series. For a club of this vintage to hold a fifty-fourth running of a national class title is a measure of how quickly its organisational reputation has grown. The people tell the story as much as the events. The Butler family threads through the club's racing life: Mick Butler as regatta coordinator and chief race officer, Jimmy "Six Guns" Butler flying the flag in the Viper fleet, and Paddy Butler leading the national Hobie association's publicity. The current committee, led by Commodore Jake de Rooy with Vice-Commodore Howard Woolley, Secretary Jocelyn Hood and Treasurer Marc Hooper, governs through five sub-committees covering racing, youth development, clubhouse development and regattas. A clubhouse development sub-committee, notably, hints that the next chapter is ashore: facilities to match the on-water ambitions.