Christies Sailing Club

Friendliness is a claim every club makes; Christies Sailing Club has had the description pinned to it by others for decades. The Flying Fifteen class association's South Australian page says the club, founded in 1958, has steadily grown into one of the friendliest in the state — and it adds that the clubhouse view ranks among the best anywhere in South Australia.

The basics are these: Christies is a family-oriented club holding accreditation as an Australian Sailing Discover Sailing Centre, sitting on the Esplanade at Christies Beach with a boat ramp right beside the clubhouse. Membership spans juniors through to adults, sailing everything from small dinghies up to trailerable yachts, and the clubhouse — licensed bar, fully equipped kitchen, change rooms — throws its regular social events open to the public, not just members. Comedy nights under the Laughing Buoy banner and live music sessions keep the rooms busy outside sailing hours, and the main room, which seats 85, is available for public hire with air conditioning, a kitchen, dishwasher, bain-marie, TV and whiteboard thrown in.

The event that best captures the club's character, though, is the Fleurieu Classic: a two-day race from the clubhouse down the coast to Wirrina and home again, billed by the club as an epic adventure. It is part regatta, part passage and part test of endurance — and exactly the kind of occasion a friendly club with serious water would invent for itself. Contact runs through the clubhouse at the Esplanade, with mail to PO Box 103, Christies Beach.

While many clubs concentrate their teaching on children, Christies puts unusual weight on getting adults into the sport. Its signature offering is a Start Sailing 1 course for the over-eighteens: two consecutive full Sundays of practical instruction, priced at $280 and — the clever part — including associate club membership in the fee, so every graduate arrives already belonging to the club. Sessions run on the club's fleet of Pacer dinghies, a sturdy two-sail trainer well suited to nervous first-timers.

Christies also backs a less common pathway: participants working toward the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award can complete components through sailing and club membership, an option few South Australian clubs publicise. Around these anchors the club runs courses for juniors, teenagers and adults, hosts an annual Discover Sailing Day to recruit newcomers, and supports what the Flying Fifteen association describes as a large junior sailing program.

The results of that teaching culture are on the record. According to the class association, former juniors from the club have progressed all the way to national titles across several classes — evidence that the pathway from a first lesson on a Pacer to the sharp end of a national fleet is well travelled at Christies. For a family club, the structure is notably complete — children, teenagers, adults and award participants each have a defined way in — and the long season from October through April, supplemented by winter Sunday racing and Thursday twilight sails, gives every one of them plenty of water time once the lessons end.

Roughly forty minutes south of the Adelaide CBD, Christies Beach faces Gulf St Vincent with the sailing club planted on the Esplanade and a boat ramp immediately alongside the clubhouse. The water here gets an enthusiastic review from the Flying Fifteen class association, which describes it as beautifully clean with exciting deep-water sailing on offer for every class of boat — deep enough, in other words, that keeled trailer yachts and Flying Fifteens share the bay comfortably with training dinghies.

Directly out from the clubhouse, about 300 metres offshore, lies Horseshoe Reef, a known snorkelling spot that also serves as a handy seamark for racing; the Surf Life Saving Club next door underlines how much of the suburb's life is organised around this beach. Keelboats get practical consideration too: the club arranged hardstand space at the nearby O'Sullivan Beach Boat Ramp, so trailerable yachts and sports boats can live close to the water rather than on trailers in driveways.

The rhythm of the sailing week runs on Saturdays through the summer season, which spans October to April, while a winter series switches to Sundays and twilight sailing fills Thursday evenings when the weather cooperates. The clubhouse opens Friday evenings and across the weekend in season, closing on long weekends. Christies sits within the City of Onkaparinga, in the state seat of Kaurna and federally Kingston — comfortably inside Adelaide's southern suburban sprawl, but with water the class association rates alongside the state's best.

For visiting sailors the logistics are easy: ramp beside the clubhouse, parking along the Esplanade, and a bar and kitchen waiting upstairs when the last boat is washed down.

The club was founded in 1958, and its story since has been one of steady, unglamorous growth. The Flying Fifteen class association records that the club has come to be known as among the friendliest in South Australia, and that its junior sailors have gone on to take national titles in several classes. Members, meanwhile, have travelled the country for major regattas — often, as one directory profile puts it, bringing the trophies home with them.

Building a keelboat-friendly club from a beach site took practical work. A milestone was securing hardstand space at the nearby O'Sullivan Beach Boat Ramp, giving trailerable yachts and sports boats somewhere to live with masts stepped and turning Christies into a genuine mixed-fleet club rather than a purely dinghy operation.

The club's place in South Australian class sailing is anchored by the Flying Fifteen: Christies is one of only three clubs in the state with a fleet, alongside the fleets at Clayton Bay and Goolwa Regatta Yacht Club, with Dave Bennett the local fleet contact. And then there is the Fleurieu Classic, the club's signature adventure: a two-day passage race along the southern coastline, out to Wirrina and back again, which the club promotes as an epic undertaking.

Fifty years and more on, the founding formula — welcoming families, mixed fleets, open doors — still holds. Between the Classic, the winter series, the Thursday twilights and the comedy nights, the club that began in 1958 has built a calendar — and a reputation — that reaches well beyond its beachfront.