Humpybong Yacht Club

Humpybong Yacht Club is an off-the-beach sailing club based at Woody Point (Hornibrook Esplanade) serving north Brisbane and the southern Sunshine Coast. The club runs Learn to Sail programs for children and adults, fleet coaching (Optimist Green/Blue/Red, intermediate coaching), youth racing and club regattas. It offers membership, volunteer opportunities and a club calendar of events.

The program that best captures Humpybong's character is the Women and Girls' Regatta — WaGR for short — runs as a weekend of racing, coaching and mentoring that, per Live Sail Die, is the only regatta in south-east Queensland for women's and girls' off-the-beach classes that includes a junior division. Skippers must be female, though male crews are permitted, and the concept was inspired by Kohimarama Yacht Club's PredictWind Girls Regatta in New Zealand. Second staged in 2023, it sits alongside an active SheSails program and a link with Deaf Sailing Queensland that widens access further.

Entry-level sailing has its own irreverent doorway: the "Sh*t-box Laser" group invites newcomers to race any old backyard boat at minimal cost, stripping away the equipment barrier entirely. The accredited Discover Sailing Centre — described by the club as one of Queensland's fastest growing — runs the Tackers junior pathway alongside Start Sailing 1 and Better Sailing courses for youth and adults, plus OutThere Sailing for the social end of the sport.

Instructional depth runs deeper than most small clubs manage. A powerboat instructor delivers Powerboat Handling and Safety Boat courses, and the Discover Sailing Centre principal is also qualified as a dinghy racing instructor, and serves as both a Regional Race Officer and a Regional Judge; qualified instructor numbers doubled across the twelve months to 2023.

Annual regattas Humpybash and Winterbash draw dinghy and catamaran sailors from as far afield as Sydney and Townsville — the 2022 Winterbash fleets included Impulses, ILCA 4, 6 and 7 rigs, Herons and Sabres — while hosted class regattas in recent years have spanned Optimists, Sabres, 125s and Nacras through to A-Class catamarans. It is a program slate built to grow sailors, then keep them.

Humpybong sails on Bramble Bay, in the north-western corner of Moreton Bay, with courses laid off Woody Point where the racing is easily watched from the clubhouse or from the 240-metre Woody Point Jetty next door. The clubhouse occupies a site beside the public boat ramp at the corner of Hornibrook Esplanade and Oxley Avenue, giving members a grassed rigging area at the top of the ramp; launching is by hand, vehicle or the club tractor, with the nearby Pelican Park ramp recommended for larger craft.

All trailable sailing craft are welcome — trailer sailers, monohulls and catamarans — and the facilities are pitched at regatta scale: a canteen operates on most race days, camping is available at the club during special regattas, and the club lists state, national and international regatta-management experience among its capabilities.

The location carries layers of maritime history. Off nearby Picnic Point lie the remains of HMQS Gayundah, the colonial-era gunboat whose hull has marked this shoreline for generations, and the jetty beside the club remains a favoured fishing and strolling spot for Redcliffe locals. Bramble Bay's enclosed waters keep conditions manageable for junior fleets while still offering enough challenge for championship racing — which helps explain the club's double life as both a learn-to-sail nursery and a host of record-fleet state titles.

Positioned on the Redcliffe Peninsula within commuting range of Brisbane's northern suburbs and the southern Sunshine Coast, the club draws its membership from a wide and growing catchment, and its ramp-side site puts every one of those members minutes from the water.

The club's founding date is one of those details that has slipped through the record-keeping cracks — no constitution minute, opening-day report or anniversary history fixes the year the modern club began. The name, though, has deep roots in local sailing. Humpybong is the old district name for the Redcliffe peninsula, and the Humpybong Regatta was already an institution in the nineteenth century: the first is recorded on 24 May 1884, and a Humpybong Sailing Club was still running the annual event decades later, with the 27th edition reported on New Year's Day 1912.

Newspaper records show "Humpybong trainees" racing in 1948, and by 1965 the Humpy Bong Yacht Club possessed club rooms large enough that the Redcliffe Chess Club began meeting in them. The class associations anchor the modern era: Queensland's Mirror Class Association, which sailed from Humpybong, affiliated with the national Mirror body in 1970, and the 125 dinghy class has been tied to the club for decades — one was donated as a training boat as recently as October 2020.

The recent chapter is emphatic. In 2023 the club hosted the Queensland ILCA championships with a record fleet exceeding 100 boats, then capped the year by winning Queensland Club of the Year and the inaugural national Category B award, finishing ahead of fellow finalists Richmond River Sailing Club of New South Wales and Sandy Bay Sailing Club of Tasmania. Whatever year the club formally began, its regatta name has been part of Redcliffe's summer for well over a century — and the present club has given that old name its most decorated season yet.