Canberra Yacht Club

Canberra Yacht Club is proof that you don't need the sea to have one of Australia's liveliest sailing clubs. From its clubhouse at 1 Mariner Place, Yarralumla, on Lake Burley Griffin, it runs one of the largest sailing schools in the country. Nearly 1,300 junior and adult courses are completed every year, and around 60 boats turn out for a typical Sunday race.

Sailing programs

• A full-time sailing school with term-time and school-holiday courses for children, adult and family programs, and a competitive youth squad.
• Sailability sessions offering adapted sailing for people of all abilities, using easy-to-sail Hansa boats and specialised support equipment.
• Buoyed Up, which introduces vulnerable children aged 7–12 to sailing through the Tackers curriculum, building confidence and life skills.

Racing. Sunday races and Wednesday twilights run from September to April, with fortnightly racing through winter, split into nine divisions. The fleet is remarkably varied: Lasers, Toppers, Optimists, RS Quests, 420s, Sharpies and RS Aeros; multihulls from Hobie Waves to F16s; plus trailables, sportsboats like the VX One and Elliott 7s, and Hansa 303s and 2.3s.

Community and facilities. The club has a boat shop stocked with fittings, ropes, clothing and repair kits, offers boat hire and storage, and hosts social events all season.

See our Yarralumla sailing clubs page for the other clubs on the lake.

The club runs a full-time sailing school with term-time and holiday courses for children, family and adult programs, and a competitive youth squad. Inclusive Sailability sessions provide adapted sailing for people of all abilities in Hansa boats. The Buoyed Up program gives disadvantaged children the chance to experience junior sailing and takes the Tackers curriculum to school classes.

The scale is impressive: nearly 1,300 courses are completed each year, and plenty of graduates stay on as members. The training fleet backs that up, with 25 Tacker Optimists, 20 Topper dinghies, 10 Hobie Waves, 10 Optimists, 10 Lasers and 5 RS Quests. Beginners learn on boats built for learning, then move into the right racing division when they're ready.

For talented juniors the pathway goes a long way. The club hosts the ACT Optimist Championships, which regularly draws more than 100 boats, and its members have included world champions, Olympic medallists, and Special Olympics and Invictus Games medallists.

Comparing options? Browse sailing courses on YouSail.

Canberra Yacht Club is at 1 Mariner Place, Yarralumla, on the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra, looking across West Lake. The lake is sheltered and tide-free, which makes it an ideal place to learn, while its shifting inland breezes keep racing interesting for experienced sailors.

The club's Sunday championship series and other races are held on the lake, and the club runs a boat shop (open weekdays and on Sunday race-day mornings) and boat hire from mid-October. Nearby clubs include the Y Canberra Region Sailing Club and ANU Sailing Club, both also at Yarralumla. See our Yarralumla sailing clubs page for more.

The lake also hosts some big regattas. Each year the club runs the ACT Optimist and ACT Dinghy Championships, a sportsboat and trailable regatta, and the Chief Minister's Regatta. Visiting sailors will find the lake compact and busy, with a mix of dinghies, cats and trailables on the water most weekends.

Canberra Yacht Club was formed in September 1959, before Canberra even had a lake to sail on. Lake Burley Griffin was still being planned, so the first members sailed on Lake George, north-east of the city. When the new lake filled, the club moved across in the summer of 1964–65.

It wasn't a smooth start. The club's temporary clubhouse on the lake was destroyed by fire in 1965. Luckily, a new clubhouse was already under construction, and in 1966 members moved into the building on the western basin that's still home today.

The club keeps an extensive digital archive, including newsletters from the 1960s, committee minutes and racing documents, records of its early regattas from 1961 to 1974, and past issues of "The Canberra Yachtsman" and "Sailing News". Its 50-year history, Capital Sailing 1959–2009, was written by Alan Foskett.

Sailability ACT merged with the club in 2017, adding an inclusive program built around Hansa boats. Today CYC combines a big sailing school, busy racing, the Buoyed Up youth program and Sailability, making it one of Canberra's main sailing clubs.