Bruny Island Boat Club

Bruny Island Boat Club Inc. is based on the foreshore at Pontoon Road, Alonnah, on South Bruny Island. It describes itself as Bruny Island's largest community-based club and was incorporated in April 2005 with two aims: to improve boating facilities on the island and to promote safe recreational boating.

The club manages the mooring pontoon at Alonnah, where members can apply for a berth, and organises events throughout the year, including sailing. Membership applications can be made through the club website, and the secretary can be contacted at secretary@brunyislandboatclub.com. See other clubs nearby on our Alonnah sailing clubs page.

Bruny Island Boat Club is a community boating club rather than a formal sailing school, and its focus is on safe recreational boating for island residents and visitors. Events through the year — including sailing — are a good way to meet other boat owners and learn local knowledge about the island's waters.

If you are looking for structured courses, clubs across the channel run accredited training: Kettering Yacht Club offers a Start Crewing course, and the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania and Derwent Sailing Squadron in Hobart run licence, marine radio and safety courses.

The club is on the foreshore at Pontoon Road, Alonnah, on the western side of South Bruny, looking across the D'Entrecasteaux Channel towards the Tasmanian mainland. The Channel offers sheltered water and plenty of anchorages, while the island's eastern side faces the open waters of Storm Bay and the Tasman Sea.

The Alonnah pontoon is the club's key facility, with berths available to members on application. Getting it built was, in the club's own words, "a fight" — a sign of how much the community values good boating access. For more about the island, see our Bruny Island destination guide.

Getting to the island is part of the adventure: the car ferry runs from Kettering on the mainland to Roberts Point on North Bruny. For visiting boats, the Channel has plenty of sheltered anchorages, including Great Bay on Bruny's western shore. See our Alonnah sailing clubs page and our FAQ on when to carry an EPIRB or PLB in Tasmania.

Bruny Island Boat Club was incorporated in April 2005 with the aim of improving boating facilities on the island and promoting safe recreational boating. Its biggest achievement has been the pontoon at Alonnah, which the club campaigned hard to secure and now manages for the island's boating community.

The island's boating history goes back much further. Bruny Island is named after French navigator Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, who charted these waters in the early 1790s, and the Cape Bruny Lighthouse, first lit in 1838, has watched over the southern approaches for almost two centuries. For generations, boats were the island's lifeline before the car ferry, and the club's work on the Alonnah pontoon continues that tradition of keeping islanders connected to the water.