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Sailing club

270-berth marina in the heart of Geelong's waterfront precinct, home of the Festival of Sails regatta. 24-hour diesel and unleaded fuel, slipway, 3-tonne crane, mast hoist and three public swing moorings east of the marina.

Sailing club

Historic club (est. 1876) at St Kilda Harbour whose 250-berth floating marina was completed in 2014 for boats 10-23m, with about 115 swing moorings nearby. The Squadron was the control centre for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic yachting events.

Sailing club

Williamstown's Nelson Place is Melbourne's most densely packed yachting waterfront, and Royal Victorian Motor Yacht Club holds down a prime piece of it — one of four clubs along the strip, shoulder to shoulder with Hobson's Bay Yacht Club, the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria and Williamstown Sailing Club, with the museum ship HMAS Castlemaine berthed at nearby Gem Pier. As its name declares, this is a powerboating club, describing itself as Victoria's leading motor yacht club, and it has held that station since 1904 with a Royal prefix earned in 1937. The membership, some 300 strong and drawn from all walks of life, reflects a deliberately open door: boat ownership is not required to join, family membership categories are offered, and the club's own tagline — a progressive club based on traditional values — captures the balance between ceremony and accessibility. The calendar runs on boating tradition: each October, Opening Day brings the Commodore's address, an official opening that has drawn State Premiers and senior naval personnel as guests, the traditional sail past and a blessing of the fleet. Between those bookends the program mixes navigation time trials, scavenger hunts and

Sailing club

Australia's senior yacht club at 120 Nelson Place, Williamstown, at the mouth of the Yarra River, with around 175 member wet berths, a hardstand and slipping yard with a 28-tonne travel hoist.

Sailing club

The trophy at Rye Yacht Club's first race was built from empty cans wrapped in foil and strung with toilet-paper bunting. Half a century later, the club's sailing school has collected state and national instructor awards three times over. That arc — from a laughed-together beach race to one of Victoria's most decorated community training operations — captures the character of this off-the-beach club on the Mornington Peninsula's bay side. Rye describes itself in four phrases — "welcoming and inclusive", "community-driven", "active and engaging" — and it sits in Category B of Australian Sailing's affiliation-fee scale, the middle tier that covers most of the state's volunteer-run clubs. The rhythm of the place is seasonal and thoroughly family-shaped. The season's organised programs open on the second weekend of October and close on the final weekend of April, and every member receives the annual RYC Yearbook carrying the notice of race, the season's sailing program, the trophy list and the sailing instructions — a proper little almanac for a beach club. Racing and training happen straight off the sand on Port Phillip, with the clubhouse, canteen, training rooms and sailing school

Sailing club

Safety Beach Sailing Club made the jump that most off-the-beach clubs never manage: when a six-hundred-berth marina rose next door in the mid-2000s, it grew from a pure dinghy club into a genuine two-world operation — beach cats and juniors on the sand, keelboats on marina berths — without shedding the family character it was founded with. The club's own tagline — "family friendly off the beach and keelboat sailing" — states the formula plainly, and it claims to cater for every racing level from first-timers through to world champions. Australian Sailing lists it as a Category B club, and the club's history records that interstate sailing groups came to respect Safety Beach for how efficiently it could organise State and National titles across a long list of classes. The setting does half the work. The club sits on Dromana Bay, on the Mornington Peninsula's calm northern shoreline between Mount Martha and Dromana, where the water is famously shallow and sheltered — ideal for teaching children and for beach-launched fleets. Behind it stands the expanded clubhouse that arrived with the Martha Cove development, giving the club dining and bar facilities plus rooms hired out for functi

Sailing club

356-360 berth floating marina on 6.5 hectares of Port Phillip at Jetty Road Sandringham, max boat length 20m and 3.5m access depth. The yard has a 40-tonne travel lift, boat slipway, keel pits and an on-site chandlery.

Sailing club

By the numbers, Somers Yacht Club is one of the more remarkable off-the-beach operations in Victoria. When Australian Sailing profiled the club in 2022 it counted 781 members over the age of eight, split almost evenly between sailing and social members, with nearly two hundred juniors on the books. The statistic that really stands out, though, is gender: 48 percent of the membership is female, and around 40 percent of the sailors on the water are women and girls — figures most Australian sailing clubs can only envy. Club racing regularly puts sixty off-the-beach boats on the course, crewed by sailors aged from seven to eighty-four. The club calls itself a club for members run by members, and its stated mission is to be "a volunteer, inclusive community where sailing unites families and friends". It sits in Category B of Australian Sailing's affiliation scale, and everything about it — the foreshore clubhouse, the rescue boats crewed by volunteers, the Friday night bar — reflects that self-description. The location helps: Somers sits at the Mornington Peninsula's south-eastern tip on Western Port Bay, a bush-fringed shoreline where reliable afternoon southerlies blow in off Bass St

Sailing club

On a peak summer weekend at Sorrento, the moorings and starting line fill with gaff-rigged wooden boats whose working lives began chasing barracouta along the Bass Strait coast more than a century ago. The Sorrento Sailing Couta Boat Club is the custodian of that fleet — Australia's biggest Couta Boat fleet, by the club's own account — and the centre of what The Wooden Boatshop ranks among the most significant maritime heritage revivals in the country. The club sits in Australian Sailing's top affiliation tier, Category A, and its honours shelf carries Yachting Victoria's Club of the Year award from 2005 plus both the Victorian and Australian Yacht Club of the Year titles for 2015–16. The club occupies a panoramic site on the Sorrento foreshore at the southern end of the Mornington Peninsula, where calm bay water and offshore summer breezes have attracted championship regattas in numbers few Australian clubs can match — world titles in the 49er and 29er, the foiling Moth, the RS:X windsurfer and the WASZP among them. A large membership supplies the skilled volunteer workforce those events demand, while the founding emphasis on a friendly family environment and opportunities for ju

Sailing club

Inverloch can fairly claim a place in world sailing history: the Moth class — the little scow that went on to circle the globe and eventually sprout foils — was born on Anderson Inlet in 1928. The South Gippsland Yacht Club sails that same water today, and it does so in a deliberately modest key. Southern Wooden Boat Sailing has called it an "archetypal community organisation", enthusiastically run by and for the locals, and the club's foreshore buildings have what the same observer affectionately termed a functional beach shack quality. Australian Sailing lists it as a Category B club. The club's own stated priority is participation — fun for every member regardless of skill level or the class of boat they sail — and the fleet reflects that: Impulses, Lasers, RS Aeros and Sabres in the monohull divisions, Taipans and Mosquitos among the cats, all launched off the beach into a shallow tidal inlet that keeps keelboats out and the focus firmly on small boats. The season runs from November, with Sunday racing between eleven and two and regattas programmed on every public holiday weekend. The event that has put the club on the national map is the Inverloch Classic Wooden Dinghy Regatt

Sailing club

Mixed in St Kilda, VIC.

Sailing club

The name tells you the first thing about this club: it is two clubs in one, a sailing fleet and a motor squadron sharing a clubhouse on the Bellarine Peninsula's bay coast, united by a stated focus on "participation in all forms of aquatic activities". The Geelong community directory describes it as a family oriented sailing club, Australian Sailing lists it in Category B, and the doors of the club, cafe and licensed bar open each Sunday from October until Easter, with social functions and live local bands animating occasional summer afternoons. The sailing heart of the club is catamaran-shaped. An A Class catamaran fleet has raced here since 1972 and has produced State and National champions, making St Leonards one of the longest-running A Class homes in the country — a status underlined when the club hosted the 60th Australian A Class Championships in February 2026. The Heron class also has deep roots here: the club ran the 64th Heron National Championship over four days in January 2025. Founding details come with an honest asterisk — club directories date the establishment to 1964, while the commodore has spoken of the club celebrating its sixtieth anniversary in 2026, which po

Sailing club

Inland sailing has a different rhythm to the coastal game, and few Victorian clubs illustrate that better than Stawell Yacht Club. The club sails on Lake Fyans, a shallow recreational lake lying between the towns of Stawell and Pomonal, beneath the foothills of the Grampian Ranges — Gariwerd — with mountain views framing both the clubhouse and the race course. It is a small, community-run organisation: the Australian Sailing affiliation-fee schedule places it in Category "B", and the office bearers named on the club website are Commodore Anthony Schellens, Secretary Tony Hillier, and Peter Knight, who combines the treasurer, rear commodore and publicity roles. The club was founded in 1954, established by the local community so that boating enthusiasts would have a way to share the pastime, and it began life catering to sailors and powerboat owners alike. Water has not always been guaranteed: sailing was curtailed during the millennium drought years, but the club reports what it calls a "healthy resurgence" since then, and Sunday afternoon racing once again anchors the season. For a small inland club, Stawell has produced some serious catamaran talent. It counts Noel Grellet, a no

Sailing club

Melbourne's drinking-water reservoirs are not obvious places to find a sailing club, which makes Sugarloaf Sailing Club one of the more unusual operations in Victorian sailing. The club sails on Sugarloaf Reservoir at Christmas Hills, in the Shire of Nillumbik north-east of the city, and it does so under licence from Melbourne Water — the authority lists licensed sailing by the club as the only permitted water access on the reservoir. Everyone else admires the water from the surrounding park; club members get to race on it. The club's tagline is "Sailing for Everyone", and its own description backs the sentiment: many members arrive new to the sport, and new sailors often begin racing almost immediately rather than serving a long apprenticeship on the shore. Sugarloaf is an affiliated member club of Australian Sailing, and it maintains a strong commitment to Sailability — sailing for people with disability — through community partnerships that include Araluen Rosanna and the disability programs of Banyule City Council. Inclusivity here is not confined to a separate stream. Access dinghies race in the club's general weekly competition alongside classes running from Savage Dolphin

Sailing club

Torquay is famous for surfboards, but at the eastern side of town the sailing scene carries a long memory of its own. Torquay Sailing Club operates from Fisherman's Beach — "Fishos" to locals — on Zeally Bay, a volunteer-run community club whose motto, "Sail. Race. Learn. Belong.", doubles as a fair summary of its program. The regular season runs from September through May, and the club holds Australian Sailing affiliation. Catamarans are part of the club's DNA. The Bill Worrall Memorial Coaster, a Hobie Cat distance race between Torquay and Anglesea, was first sailed in 1975 and celebrated its 50th edition over the Australia Day weekend in January 2025; it is the season highlight for Torquay and for its co-host, the Anglesea Motor Yacht Club, alike. That heritage shapes the teaching fleet, which pairs O'Pen Skiffs for juniors with Hobie Wave catamarans for adults and older teens, and half a century of Coaster history keeps the catamaran identity current. The current office bearers are Commodore Fletcher Warren-Myers, Secretary Herman Voorhoeve and Treasurer Madeline Gillard. The club backs the national inclusion frameworks Pride in Sport and Play By The Rules, signalling a welco

Sailing club

Start with the most important fact: there is no water. The Victorian Blokart Club sails on land, racing Blokarts — compact three-wheeled land yachts — around a dedicated track at Casey Fields in Cranbourne East. It is sailing in every technical sense, from windward legs to a formal international rulebook, conducted on wheels at speeds that can exceed the wind itself. The club is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2012, with a membership that has fluctuated between ten and twenty-five people over the years and members whose ages span from fifteen to eighty-seven. It holds dual membership of the Australian Blokart Association and Australian Sailing, and its delegates to the national association are Peter Walsh, who also serves as the association's Vice President, and Ross Porz. Blokart International, the sport's manufacturer body, calls it "Victoria's newest and largest Blokart club", adding that it is an active participant in the national association. A Facebook group, Victorian.Blokarts, serves as the community noticeboard. Small numbers have not meant small occasions. Over the Australia Day weekend of January 2020 the club staged the Australian Blokart Open on its Case

Sailing club

Keelboat in Williamstown, VIC.

Sailing club

Boat Club in Rushworth, VIC.

Sailing club

Some clubs have to earn seniority; Warneet Motor Yacht Club simply states it. "Proudly Westernport's Oldest Yacht Club" is the club's own banner, and by its account it was the first yacht club established on Western Port, the great tidal bay south-east of Melbourne, formed in February 1952. More than seventy years on — the club marked its seventieth anniversary in 2022 — it remains anchored in the same spot on Rutherford Inlet at Warneet, in the City of Casey. The "Motor" in the name hints at the club's breadth. This is a cruising, racing and social club that opens its doors to non-sailing members too, and the Save the Warneet Jetties group describes it as "as much a community hub as a yacht club", offering a base for community groups across Warneet and the wider City of Casey. The club's self-bestowed nickname is "the jewel in the crown of Warneet" — an immodest phrase, but one backed by decades of local institution-building. It is an affiliated member of Australian Sailing, with Commodore Alex Stroud at the helm and mail directed to PO Box 315, Tooradin. Its flagship occasion, the Warneet Around French Island Race, is a long-running fixture of Victorian distance sailing and has

Sailing club

Where the Southern Ocean meets the coast of south-west Victoria, Warrnambool Yacht Club runs a program that is small in scale but plainly serious about sailing. The club describes itself as a small but active, family-orientated sailing club, and it operates as a registered Child Safe sports club from the western end of Lady Bay in Warrnambool. It is an affiliated member club of Australian Sailing, with Commodore Don as the published point of contact, Racing and Social membership options on offer, and enquiries handled by email and through the club's Facebook page. The season stretches from early October through to Easter, and the fleet's character is set by two classic performance dinghy classes. Warrnambool is one of Victoria's enduring Fireball clubs: as of October 2023, Fireball Australia listed it among the state's four main class strongholds alongside Geelong, Frankston and Cairn Curran. Its sailors also campaign the Australian Sharpie, with Don and Glenda Allen, sailing with Lucas Shears, representing the club at the 2024 Australian Sharpie Nationals in the Over 50 and Country divisions. The club's most visible recent step has been on the participation front. In 2025 it sig

Sailing club

Dinghy in Werribee South, VIC.

Sailing club

Begin with the building, because the building explains the club. At 1 Foreshore Road, Balnarring Beach, stands a clubhouse raised in 1960 by volunteer weekend working bees — a structure the Mornington Peninsula Shire's 2022 heritage review judges to be of local historical significance, one of the shire's earliest, largest and best-preserved do-it-yourself clubhouses. This is Westernport Yacht Club: a sailing, fishing and social club for off-the-beach boats on the shores of Western Port Bay, and a fixture of the Balnarring community for more than six decades and still counting. The club bills itself as "the first choice on Westernport Bay" — promising Sundays afloat, fishing and a good time — and its membership structure reflects that breadth, with sailing, fishing, powerboat and purely social categories. It is a volunteer-run organisation affiliated with Australian Sailing, led by Commodore James Cooper, and its stated values — Teamwork, Responsibility, Learning, Passion, Respect — are posted where members can see them. The sailing program is substantial: off-the-beach racing from October to April across a dozen classes, divisional series in spring and summer, and a calendar of s

Sailing club

Few Melbourne suburbs wear their maritime past as openly as Williamstown, and the local sailing club sits squarely inside that seafaring streetscape. Williamstown Sailing Club is a community, off-the-beach dinghy club on Hobsons Bay, in the sheltered north-western pocket of Port Phillip, and it casts a deliberately wide membership net. According to the club, its ranks span a broad spread of ages, interests and abilities, taking in sailors, anglers and purely social members under the one roof. That dual character runs deep: local directories have long listed it as a sailing and fishing club, and a controlled number of fishing members are registered to use its boat ramp alongside the sailors. The clubhouse makes the most of its foreshore setting. The club itself describes the outlook from its upper deck and function room as among the finest views in Melbourne, stretching across Hobsons Bay to the city skyline, and it pairs that vantage point with an active social rhythm of post-race barbecues, Friday evening bar nights and Christmas and New Year celebrations. The club is an affiliated member of Australian Sailing, with Leon Raymond serving as Commodore and Greg Parsons as Secretary

Sailing club

Melbourne's western suburbs have historically been thin on sailing clubs, a gap that becomes obvious when you trace the Port Phillip shoreline between Williamstown and Geelong. Wyndham Yacht Club was created to close that gap. Formed in April 2018, its stated aim was bringing people from Melbourne's west onto the bay under sail — and it remains among the youngest yacht clubs anywhere in Victoria. The club's orientation is firmly toward keelboats rather than dinghies, and its membership philosophy is unashamedly open-door. The club describes a mixture of experienced sailors, the not-so-experienced and complete novices, drawn largely from Point Cook and Werribee South, with others across the wider Wyndham region — though it notes with some amusement that members have turned up from as far afield as Darwin and Adelaide. That kind of spread says much about the club's character: less a formal institution, more a gathering point for western-suburbs locals who want keelboat sailing without crossing the city or the West Gate. Wyndham Yacht Club is an affiliated member of Australian Sailing, and it keeps the administrative load light. Newcomers can trial the scene through a Sail Pass temp