Lacepede Bay Sailing Club

A lobster on the trophy table says something about a sailing club's sense of place. At Kingston SE on South Australia's south-east coast, the Lacepede Bay Sailing Club has made its annual Lobster Regatta — held in early January — the centrepiece of its calendar, a fixture documented as far back as 1987 and still drawing fleets of catamarans, monohulls and sailboards into Lacepede Bay.

The clubhouse stands on the foreshore at Marine Parade, listed by the Kingston District Council at number 94, about a kilometre south of the caravan park and barely a hundred metres from a sandy beach that runs, almost unbelievably, some 180 kilometres from Cape Jaffa to the Murray Mouth. The club holds Australian Sailing affiliation in Band 22, the smallest of the fee bands, with the SAcommunity directory recording Yachting South Australia as its parent body, and it holds its own entry in the Geoscience Australia place-name register — a club literally on the map.

Its founding date isn't published, but newspaper reports show it well established by the mid-1980s, with a commodore, a vice-commodore and a full trophy presentation at the 1987 regatta. The club markets itself today as more than a sailing club — a community of ocean lovers, in its own words — with a modern clubhouse and bar for members, a canteen, showers, a broad lawn for washing down gear and rescue facilities.

Visiting sailors and families are welcome to take part in the racing and social program whenever they visit, and the fixture list runs from October through to Easter. In February 2026 the club hosts the South Australian Taipan catamaran state titles, and the national Formula 18 association lists it among Australia's F18 clubs.

For a club of its size, Lacepede Bay's service list is surprisingly broad: the SAcommunity directory records sailing, racing, an aquatics program and coaching among its offerings. The club doesn't advertise accredited Australian Sailing learn-to-sail courses, so contact it about how coaching is currently delivered. Across country South Australia, clubs of this scale typically teach through the membership rather than through formal course structures — experienced sailors coaching juniors in club boats on race mornings, skills passed along informally but consistently, with visiting instructors or holiday programs arranged when numbers justify them.

The clearest window into how Lacepede Bay handles its youngest sailors comes from its distance racing: the club's practice, documented in race notices, is that juniors unable to compete when the weather is strong are supervised at the clubhouse by non-sailing adults — a family-minded solution that keeps parents racing and children safely involved in the day.

That inclusive instinct extends to visitors: sailors and families from out of town are expressly invited to join in racing and social activities whenever they can, which in practice makes the club a sailing gateway for the whole Kingston district and its summer tourist population. The competitive pathway on offer is distinctive in its own right — the fleets span sailboards, catamarans and monohulls, with catamaran classes that have included F18 Infusions, Nacras, A Class, Taipans, F16s, Stingrays, Mosquitoes, Cobras and Arrows — and hosting the 2026 South Australian Taipan state titles places its sailors alongside the state's best in that class.

For structured, certified tuition, families would typically look to accredited centres elsewhere in the region; what Kingston's club provides is the thing those courses lead to: regular, welcoming racing through a long summer season on a protected bay.

Ten kilometres offshore, the Margaret Brock Reef does this club an enormous favour: it breaks the Southern Ocean's force before it reaches Lacepede Bay, leaving racing water that one race notice described as having no surf, no big waves and no rocks — the only obstacles in the bay being the jetty and the boat-ramp rock wall. Behind the clubhouse, a hundred metres of lawn and sand separate the bar from a beach running some 180 kilometres, from Cape Jaffa in the south to the Murray Mouth in the north, one of the longest continuous sandy stretches any Australian sailing club can claim as its front yard.

The season opens in the third week of October and runs through to Easter, with racing on Saturdays — at half past two during daylight saving and two o'clock otherwise, though the community directory rounds the season as October to April with two o'clock starts. Fleets reflect the bay's versatility: a sailboard fleet of about fifteen races alongside catamarans and monohulls, and the club has a long association with the board side of the sport — eighteen sailboards contested the 1987 Lobster Regatta, where the Kingston Medical Clinic donated a special line-honour prize that doubled the dollar value of the highest recorded windspeed, twenty knots.

The club's signature test is the Earthmovers, a distance race of more than seventy kilometres sailed each April — documented in 2010 and 2011 with a thirty-dollar entry and handicap prizes for one, two and three laps — that sends fleets the length of the bay and back. Catamaran sailors who have raced it describe open-water distance with inshore comfort: exactly the combination the reef provides.

Nobody can now say exactly when the Lacepede Bay Sailing Club began, as its founding year isn't published. What the record does show is a club already in full stride by the mid-1980s. In January 1987, the South-East Kingston Leader reported Commodore Doug Stewart, with Vice-Commodore Dr J. Kasauskas, presiding over the trophy presentations at the club's Lobster Regatta — evidence of an established organisation with a settled annual fixture.

That 1987 edition opened with an invitation race on Saturday 10 January in Lacepede Bay, alongside a race to Cape Jaffa sailed in record time. The Lobster trophy itself, awarded for overall yardstick performance across all classes, went to Mark "Gus" Hancock, while the Cape Jaffa race's catamaran division was won by Touchwood, sailed by M. Hancock and G. Hartman.

Sailboards were already woven into the club's fabric — eighteen boards contested that regatta, and the Kingston Medical Clinic put up a special prize tying the award's value to the weekend's peak wind, twenty knots. The regatta's endurance is itself the story: the Lobster Regatta remains the club's headline event each January, one of those rare local fixtures that links a club's documented past directly to its present.

Through the intervening decades the club kept its place in South Australian sailing — affiliated with the state body, listed in the smallest fee band, and known widely enough that the national Formula 18 catamaran association counts it among the country's F18 clubs. Its continued standing was confirmed when Kingston SE was chosen to host the South Australian Taipan state titles in February 2026 — a modern vote of confidence in a club whose beginnings, whatever their date, lie well back in the town's maritime life.