Find the right help, close to the water.

Marina service

City marina of 69 berths (including 10 for public use) in Victoria Harbour, Docklands, for vessels up to 35m, with members lounge, laundry and pump-out; fuel available at sister marina Pier 35.

Sailing club

"The Jewel on the Bay" is the tagline Davey's Bay Yacht Club gives itself, and for once the small club's self-assessment is widely echoed by those who sail against it. Tucked into a sheltered cove at Mount Eliza on Port Phillip's eastern shore, it is among the oldest yacht clubs in Victoria, founded in 1909, and it has spent more than a century demonstrating that size and achievement are loosely related. From this compact membership have come state, national and world titleholders, plus three Olympians — among them Jenni Lidgett, who crewed with Addy Bucek in the 470 at Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996. The club's soul, though, belongs to one boat above all: the Flying Fifteen, the Uffa Fox-designed sports keelboat that dominates its senior fleet, launches from the club's two cranes, and brought the Australian championship to this little bay over the 2012–13 new year. Around that keelboat core runs a busy off-the-beach scene — Optimists and OziOptis for the juniors, Pacers for training and racing, with Sabres, 420s, Fireballs, ILCAs and even Finns regularly afloat, plus room for sailboards, paddle boards and kayaks. The weekly rhythm is distinctive: Friday evenings and Sundays

Sailing club

Dinghy in Derrinallum, VIC.

Sailing club

Nowhere else in this directory can you rig a boat less than a kilometre from the Melbourne GPO. Docklands Yacht Club sails on Victoria Harbour, in the literal heart of the city, and it has turned that improbable location into a mission: making sailing available to absolutely everyone, including those the sport usually leaves ashore. The club has wholeheartedly adopted the Sailability philosophy of "Sailing For Everyone", merged with Docklands Sailability to pool equipment, align objectives and sharpen promotion, and signed on to Yachting Victoria's 2014 Inclusive Clubs Standard. Its members are, by and large, families and individuals from inner urban Melbourne, with significant participation by people with disability — a profile unlike any bay or country club in the state. The scale is modest but the reach is wide: at the turn of the last decade the club counted 87 financial members yet around 500 casual participants a year, across roughly fifty days of on-water activity. Sailing days run on every month's second and fourth Sundays, from eleven until three, keeping the barrier to turning up as low as the harbour is sheltered. The club shares its base at the Community Hub at The Dock

Sailing club

Dinghy in Dromana, VIC.

Sailing club

A seahorse appears on the sails, the burgee and the clubhouse wall at Elwood Sailing Club, and that little emblem carries the club's whole personality: improvised, seaworthy and a touch eccentric. The club grew out of a canoe club on the Elwood foreshore, roughly eight kilometres south-east of central Melbourne, and it still has the feel of a place where sailors make their own fun. Racing here covers monohulls and catamarans, run on Saturdays from October through to Easter with patrol boats on the water, and the club regularly hosts state, national and international championship events on Port Phillip Bay. Alongside the dinghy fleet sits one of the bay's more committed boardsailing crews: Elwood counts up to fifty dedicated windsurfer members, and twenty or more rigs can be seen launching off the beach when the afternoon breeze fills in. Kites, notably, are banned from this stretch of foreshore, which keeps the water for wind-powered craft of the older kind. The mood is competitive without being exclusive — the club caters to sailors of every skill level, and basic windsurfing gear and stand-up paddleboards are available for members to borrow, with lessons on offer. In 2024 the clu

Sailing club

Every summer the population of Flinders swells with holidaymakers, and the little yacht club on the foreshore swells with them. Flinders Yacht Club is, by design, a holiday sailing club: its season runs from November to April with racing every Sunday, and its membership mixes locals with families who return to this corner of Western Port year after year. The fleet reflects the place. Off-the-beach dinghies launch straight from the sand in front of the clubhouse, while the keel boat and couta boat fleet lies on moorings at Flinders Pier, their tenders either launched at the pier ramp or kept in the club's secure compound. The club has occupied its beachfront position since 1976, looking out across Westernport Bay toward Phillip Island, and it runs on volunteer energy — an active committee of sailors steers the program, with a junior committee making sure events carry something for the kids as well. That junior thread runs deep here: the children's party after the annual sailing school, with its celebrated ice-cream eating competition, is as much a fixture as any trophy race. The clubhouse itself, with a large function room and a deck overlooking the bay, does double duty as a commun

Sailing club

Frankston Yacht Club's clubhouse turns heads before a single sail is hoisted. The two-storey building that rose from an eleven-million-dollar redevelopment of the foreshore, designed by architect Gregory Burgess and shaped by the coastal tea tree and banksia dunes around it, opened with a ground-floor café in 2022 and carries floor-to-ceiling views sweeping one hundred and eighty degrees across Port Phillip Bay. It is a statement of intent from a club founded in 1937 and now home to around two hundred members. The membership is broader than sailing alone: stand-up paddleboarding and kayaking have their own membership categories, and the Mornington Peninsula Triathlon Club shares the facilities. Yet sailing remains the core. The club runs its Learn2Sail program as a recognised Discover Sailing centre, races on the bay, and opens its doors to prospective members on Saturdays from May through October. The atmosphere is deliberately family-oriented — the lounge looks over the water toward Melbourne, and the ground-floor Oliver's Corner café keeps the clubhouse humming on non-sailing days. Perched beside the mouth of Kananook Creek on Long Island Drive, a short walk from Frankston Stati

Sailing club

Everything about the Geelong Trailable Yacht Club starts from a single idea: the boat lives on its trailer. Rig it in the morning, launch at the ramp, race on Corio Bay, winch it back on and tow it home — no marina berth fees, no permanent mooring, no fixed overheads beyond the essentials. That philosophy, deliberately low-cost and open, has defined the club since twenty-eight people founded it in a technical school library in 1973. Racing is based at the St Helens Marina precinct on Corio Bay's northern shore at East Geelong, with courses built from the club's own marks and buoys and the start and finish near the marina. The fleet covers trailable yachts and small ramp-launched keelboats, and the club is emphatic that you don't need to own a boat to belong: owners regularly look for crew, and visitors are welcome to sail a handful of races before being asked to join. Alongside the racing sits an extensive cruising calendar — trailer-sailers being, after all, boats built to go places — and the club promotes a Discover Sailing pathway for newcomers. The club's voice is its newsletter Even Keel, published since 1977 and once judged the best club newsletter in Victoria. Fifty years on

Sailing club

Paynesville measures itself by the water, and the Gippsland Lakes Yacht Club has been one of the town's fixed points since 1937. Standing on the foreshore where McMillan Straits meets Lake Victoria, it is an entirely volunteer-run club that sails all year round — a rarity among country clubs — and describes itself as one of Victoria's most successful family sailing clubs and among the most active in country Victoria. The numbers give that claim some weight: two hundred and fifty-eight members plus another hundred and forty-three family members as of 2020, with membership still growing through the bushfire and COVID years. The clubhouse, seating a hundred, is Paynesville's biggest venue and the town's default gathering place — Probus clubs, quilters, the CFA awards dinner, the Bendigo Community Bank board, the Business and Tourism Association, the Lions seniors' Christmas dinner and the Cancer Council's Biggest Morning Tea have all used the rooms. On the water the club's personality splits two ways: a deep competitive program across classes from Flying Fifteens to trailer-sailers, and an unusually strong women's and youth cohort. Monthly Female Skipper races run within the Twilight

Sailing club

Hampton Sailing Club began with a group of young women, a borrowed shed and a fleet of Sabots. Founded back in 1945 under the name Victorian Ladies Yacht Club, it gave girls and women a place to race at a time when Melbourne's bayside clubs largely didn't — neighbouring Sandringham Yacht Club, for instance, then restricted female membership. Eighty years on, the anniversary acknowledged in federal Parliament by local member Tim Wilson in October 2025, the club is open to all but still carries its founding character: small, volunteer-run, unpretentious and unusually welcoming. It is a one hundred per cent volunteer organisation, with its race management team running Sunday afternoon racing from spring through autumn. The fleet policy is equally distinctive: there are no preferred or sponsored classes, and the club accepts all watercraft types up to five metres in length — with the exception of catamarans — so the start line mixes dinghy classes that would rarely meet elsewhere. Not everyone here races; the club encourages unhurried cruising inside Hampton harbour and up and down the bayside coast just as warmly. The clubhouse sits on the Sandringham foreshore facing Hampton Beach, j

Sailing club

Hastings Yacht Club does more than sail: it helps run a harbour. On the western shore of Western Port, sixty-two kilometres south of Melbourne and just off the Frankston–Flinders Road, the club is the gathering point for the district's yachting fraternity, cruising and racing sailors alike, and an integral part of the town — it opens its facilities to community groups, supports the local Volunteer Marine Rescue, and its members serve as key stakeholders in the affairs of Hastings Harbour. The club has been here since 1957, and its newsletter, The Dolphin, keeps the membership looped in. On the water the club casts a wide net: Saturday racing for yachts, trailer-sailers and multihulls, the Summer Bight and Summer Paddock series, a winter off-the-beach dinghy program, and a Sailability operation with purpose-built boats for sailors with disabilities. The multihull contingent has punched well above local level — four Hastings crews contested the 2019 Australian Yachting Championship. Ashore, the scale of the place surprises first-time visitors: a three-thousand-square-metre secure boatyard with mast-up storage, a slip that handles monohulls and multihulls to twenty tonnes, a floating

Marina service

Freehold-berth marina tucked inside the Martha Cove harbour at Safety Beach, with three pontoons of berths under 24-hour monitored security; harbour entrance depth about 2.4m at low tide.

Sailing club

Club at 270 Nelson Place, Williamstown, with 106 berths accommodating boats from 25ft to 44ft, water and electricity, a slipway, and visitor moorings on request.

Sailing club

Yacht Club in Horsham, VIC.

Sailing club

Off-the-beach sailors on the Bellarine Peninsula speak about Indented Head in slightly possessive tones, and the club there is happy to fan the flame, describing its stretch of coast as arguably the best location for off-the-beach sailing in Victoria. Whether or not you accept the claim, the fundamentals are hard to argue with: clean, clear water, a soft white sand beach to launch from and a superb grassed rigging area behind it, all facing north across Port Phillip from a spot between Portarlington and St Leonards, about 33 kilometres east of Geelong. Indented Head Yacht Club is a dinghy club through and through, racing Olympic-class ILCAs alongside Tasars, Sabres, Impulses and Optimists over Olympic-style courses, and it states plainly that everyone from beginners to international champions is welcome. In a small township with few organised outlets for young people, the club notes that it provides the only structured youth activity in Indented Head — a role it clearly takes seriously, with a pathway that runs from five-year-olds through to national titleholders. The club's identity has also widened in unexpected directions. Since 2023 it has been home to the Salty B!tches, a mo

Sailing club

Yacht Club in Kew, VIC.

Sailing club

Every Easter, a small town sixteen kilometres south of Swan Hill turns into one of Victorian sailing's busiest addresses. Caravans and tents fill the grassed parklands around Lake Boga Yacht Club, catamarans rig along the shoreline, and for four days the lake hosts a regatta that Australian Sailing has described as one of the largest and best-run in the state. Competitors mostly camp beside their boats, wandering the park with a beer or a coffee before and after sailing — the social fabric of the event is as much a drawcard as the racing. The rest of the year, Lake Boga is a classic inland off-the-beach club, sailing dinghies and catamarans most Sundays from mid-September to the end of April. The regular classes tell the story of Australian small-boat sailing across the decades: Micron, Mirror, Paper Tiger, Fireball, Impulse, Sabre, Pacer, Arrow and Mosquito all appear on the club's list. The membership travels well, too — the club records that its sailors compete Australia-wide with plenty of success, and it has hosted numerous National and State titles for various classes over the years. Positioned roughly 300 kilometres north of Melbourne in the state's North West, the club dr

Marina service

Private houseboat marina on Lake Eildon (inland Victoria) with a full breakwater, fuel barge (PULP, diesel, ULP), sewerage pump-out at the marina entrance, slipping facilities, the Aqua Bar & Cafe and courtesy picnic boats for berth access.

Sailing club

Dinghy in Eppalock, VIC.

Sailing club

On 28 November 2022, the City of Ballarat reopened Lake Learmonth to recreational boating after almost a decade of closure, and the council made a point of welcoming wind-powered vessels back onto the water. For the small yacht club that carries the lake's name, it was the end of a very long wait. Lake Learmonth Yacht Club is one of the sixteen inland Victorian clubs listed by Australian Sailing's Victorian general manager, a small dinghy club based beside the township of Learmonth, about twenty kilometres north-west of Ballarat on the Sunraysia Highway. Inland clubs like this one occupy a particular place in Australian sailing. Far from the coast and at the mercy of rainfall and water policy, they survive on loyalty rather than numbers, and their members tend to be all-rounders who race whatever floats. The documented record at Lake Learmonth fits that pattern: Explorer 16 trailer-sailers racing for a national championship, Australian Sailfish sailors photographed on the water in the mid-1970s, and Mosquito catamarans registered to the club around the turn of the century. Small classes, practical boats, and a lake that decides the terms. The club also carries civic weight beyond

Sailing club

At midnight on a March long weekend, dozens of trailer-sailers slip off a dark Gippsland shoreline and point their bows east across Lake Wellington, bound for the far end of the lakes system. They are racing the Marlay Point Overnight Race, and the club that invented it — Lake Wellington Yacht Club — has been sending them into the night for more than half a century. The race has been called the Sydney-Hobart for smaller yachts and remains Australia's only overnight contest for trailer sailors, and it defines this club the way no single regatta defines most. The club itself stands at Marlay Point, on Lake Wellington's western shore — this being the westernmost of the Gippsland Lakes — roughly twenty kilometres out of Sale. It is a trailer-sailer and off-the-beach club whose season stretches from October to April, blending social days with racing, and whose fleet list reads like a survey of Australian family sailing: Hartley 16s, Explorer 16s, RL24s, Castle 650s, Noelex 25s, Timpenny 650s and Boomerang 20s alongside Mosquitoes, Lasers, Sabres, Hansas and assorted catamarans. Nobody needs to arrive with a boat — newcomers are invited to simply ask at the club, and something will be f

Marina service

Marina at Lakes Entrance, Victoria's busiest boating town on the Gippsland Lakes. Berthing at Lakes Entrance is managed by Gippsland Ports (office at Bullock Island); up to 5 premium valet berths (20m x 6m, with power, water and security gate) on the Cunninghame Quay jetty, booked via Lonsdale Cruises ph 0408 396 876; further itinerant berths at Grassy Point Marina adjacent to Gippsland Lakes Yacht Club

Sailing club

Mixed in Lakes Entrance, VIC.