About
Yarra Bay Sailing Club at a glance
Community sailing club on Yarra Bay on the northern shore of Botany Bay near the port, sailing dinghies and small keelboats.
Service area: Botany Bay
- Marina type
- sailing club
- Operator
- Yarra Bay Sailing Club
- Region
- Botany Bay
- Water body
- Botany Bay (Yarra Bay)
Facilities and services
- boat ramp
- beach launching and boat ramp
- dinghy and catamaran storage
- club start/rescue boats
- junior sail training (Sabots, O'pen Skiffs)
- senior racing (multihulls, Lasers, Cherubs)
- licensed clubhouse
- Csalt bistro
- regatta hosting
About Yarra Bay Sailing Club
Yarra Bay Sailing Club, formally the Yarra Bay 16ft Skiff Sailing Club, has occupied the same crescent of sand on the northern shore of Botany Bay since January 1928, when it rose from the wreckage of the disbanded Botany Flying Squadron with seven boats racing off Howes boatshed in what members described as a picnic atmosphere. Volunteers built the clubhouse on a Crown land lease around 1940, opening it in 1941, the same year the club affiliated with the NSW Skiff Association, and it was incorporated in 1967. The 16-footer was its lifeblood for half a century: the club hosted skiff carnivals and national and international regattas, and in January 1988 ran the Bicentennial Regatta in conjunction with the First Fleet Re-enactment, a fitting stage since Yarra Bay is where Arthur Phillip first stepped ashore in 1788 before deciding on Port Jackson, and where the French expedition under Laperouse followed six days later. The 16s no longer race here, priced out and displaced by smaller classes, and today's club runs two divisions: seniors sailing multihulls, Lasers and Cherubs on Sunday afternoons, juniors training and racing Sabots and Bic or O'pen Skiffs on Sunday mornings. The shoreline it sails from has been remade around it. The Yarra Bay Pleasure Grounds drew day-trippers from 1901, Depression-era shanty towns filled the huts in the 1930s, and the airport runway, oil refinery and Port Botany container terminal have since carved into the bay and altered its wave and tidal patterns permanently, a change the club's own history records with some feeling.
Marina facilities
This is a community sailing club rather than a marina, and its facilities are arranged around launching and supporting small boats rather than berthing keeled vessels. The club sits directly on the beach at the end of Yarra Road, Phillip Bay, with rigging space, a boat ramp and beach launching for dinghies, catamarans and small keelboats, and storage arrangements for members' boats as space allows. Racing support includes club start and rescue boats, with Sunday racing for the senior division, multihulls, Lasers and Cherubs, and a structured junior program on Sunday mornings using Sabots and O'pen Skiffs, the modern self-bailing training dinghy the club uses to bridge young sailors out of learn-to-sail courses. Visitors are welcome at racing by arrangement, and the club has a long tradition of hosting class carnivals and regattas when invited by class associations. The clubhouse is licensed and trades as a social venue in its own right: the bistro operation, known as Csalt, serves a la carte meals with a Greek and seafood leaning, and reviews single out the half lobster, with trading hours around lunch and afternoons; the phone number for the club and bistro is 02 9311 2592. For visiting trailer sailors, the practical offer is ramp access, parking, a meal and a beer after racing rather than overnight berthing; there are no marina berths, no fuel, and no hardstand. Keelboats and cruisers needing a berth on Botany Bay look to the marinas at Sans Souci or toward the Cooks River, while repairs cluster around the Taren Point boatyards on the bay's southern side. Membership enquiries go through the club directly, and the junior training program remains its busiest pipeline.
Local sailing knowledge
Botany Bay is a working port wrapped around a surprisingly good small-boat sailing ground, and Yarra Bay sits at its most protected corner. The bay's northern shore gives flat water in the prevailing summer nor'easters, which is why dinghy and multihull racing has thrived here for nearly a century, though sailors must keep clear of the shipping lanes: container ships and bulk carriers move constantly between the heads and the Port Botany terminals just west of the club, and port exclusion zones are enforced. Tidal range is small, around 1.5 metres, and the container terminal's reclamation has changed local wave patterns, something the old hands still talk about. Entrance to the bay from the sea is deep and dredged between Cape Banks and Cape Solander, with no bar. Around the headland lies La Perouse, with its museum, bare island fort, fish and chips and the French mans' beach where the seasonal mullet run, a traditional Kamay practice, still takes place; the Kamay Botany Bay National Park covers both headlands and tells the 1770 Cook and 1788 Phillip and Laperouse stories. For a post-race feed beyond the clubhouse, La Perouse's strip is five minutes away. Anchoring for cruising boats is fair in Frenchmans Bay and off Towra Point in settled weather, though swell refracts into the bay in big southerlies. The club's juniors train within sight of container cranes and the airport runway, a peculiarly Sydney juxtaposition that locals no longer notice: 16-foot skiffs have raced here under exactly that skyline for generations, and the 115-year-old Botany Bay Championship still draws the class back to this water.