Middle Harbour Yacht Club

Middle Harbour Yacht Club (MHYC) is a large Sydney-based yacht and sailing club located at The Spit, Mosman (75 Lower Parriwi Road). The club runs an extensive organised sailing program and regattas, provides marina and berthing facilities (including a marina map, berthing enquiries and a tender service), hardstand dinghy storage, and hosts training activities via programs such as the Flying Fish Sail Academy and a National Training Centre. MHYC also publishes sailing resources and lists marine services and service providers associated with the clubhouse and marina.

Scale sets the training here apart, and the club is not shy about it, calling itself a national leader in sail training and education. The accredited Discover Sailing Centre runs Tackers, Dinghy, Keelboat and Powerboat courses, and the MHYC Youth Sailing Program takes sailors from beginner to racer all year round, with the International Optimist as its junior class boat and Centreboard Racing divisions for junior and youth classes as they progress.

Adult training has a distinctive structure: it is delivered by the resident school, Flying Fish Sail Academy, whose courses run from basics right through to radio, powerboat, Safety & Sea Survival and RYA/YA Yachtmaster qualifications, with MHYC members receiving discounts. Keelboat Information and Education Sessions run through the winter months both face-to-face and online, Discover Sailing Experiences offer dinghy taster sessions, and the club has hosted Australian Sailing Dinghy Instructor courses. This learn-to-sail tradition has deep roots — the club created a "Sailing Birds" group back in the 1970s specifically to develop learn-to-sail programs.

Inclusive sailing is built in rather than bolted on. Sailability Middle Harbour sails from the club's main pontoon on the second and last Sunday mornings of each month, year-round, using Hansa/Access 303 dinghies with volunteer skippers; sessions run about forty minutes, with a wheelchair-accessible ramp and crane-and-sling transfer, priced at ten dollars a session or sixty dollars a year.

On the racing side, development is constant: Saturday inshore racing, an all-year Wednesday non-spinnaker fixture, Thursday and Friday twilight racing (non-spinnaker and spinnaker respectively) in daylight saving, plus an Open Series and the major regattas. From a child's first Tackers session to a Yachtmaster ticket, the whole arc of a sailing life can happen at this one address.

The address is 75 Lower Parriwi Road at The Spit, Mosman, on the shores of Middle Harbour about seven kilometres north of the city. The on-water infrastructure centres on a 103-berth marina with nine moorings — berths reserved for full, senior and life members, allocated by priority with preference given to yachts active in the club sailing program, a policy that ties the marina directly to the racing fleet.

Ashore there is a Members Bar, the Discover Sailing Centre plus a private members' meeting room, and the tenant mix tells its own story: Sydney Harbour Surf Club, Flying Fish Sailing Academy, Pacific Rigging, a PFD servicing business, and the St Siandra bar and restaurant, named for the club's most famous yacht. The Australian Sailing Team's National Training Centre operates from the club, making it the team's official home.

Racing courses are set on Middle Harbour and the Sound, the open bight where the middle harbour meets Sydney Harbour proper. Detailed wind statistics for the courses are not published, but Sydney sailors know this water well: the Sound offers genuine open-water breeze with tidal influence and headland effects, while the reaches of Middle Harbour provide sheltered alternatives when conditions demand. The offshore program, headed by the Sydney Short Ocean Racing Championship, takes the fleet out through the heads entirely.

Practical operations run daily — the marina office is open nine to five, the sailing office Wednesday to Saturday — and the club's wider footprint includes a Foundation raising funds through the Australian Sports Foundation to upgrade the clubhouse and facilities, charity events and industry days, and even the monthly meetings of the Probus Club of Middle Harbour. It functions as a small maritime village as much as a yacht club.

Early in 1939, Togo Middows invited a small group, George Griffin among them, to his Mosman home to propose a new club. It began life as the Middle Harbour Cruising Association — renamed Middle Harbour Yacht Club after the war — holding its first official meeting at the Griffin Brothers' Boatshed on The Spit, Dick Down becoming President and Middows Secretary. Griffin, a first-class boat builder known as "Gorilla", built the club's first registered yacht, "Flying Cloud", for Middows, and was Sydney Harbour's first yachtsman to race carrying a genoa.

Racing continued through the war years, Saturday racing in two divisions beginning in 1944; by 1947 the fleet numbered 33 yachts. The Mayor of Mosman opened the first clubhouse on 27 November 1954; the first offshore race had started three months earlier: ten yachts to Newport, "Pinta" winning in the small hours. Then came "Siandra": the club's first Hobart entrant (1956), winner of the 1958 Sydney–Hobart under Graham Newland and of the CYCA's first Blue Water Championship in 1960.

A Sydney–Brisbane race was created for the 25th anniversary, "Cadence" and "Carmen" first and second home; Ron Swanson's "Sundowner" claimed both line and handicap honours in the 1969 Brisbane–Gladstone, and Peter Hopwood's "Harmony" won the cyclone-hit 1972 edition.

The old Spit Baths site was obtained in 1963, creating the marina complex and a Centreboard Division; membership passed 2,000 in the 1970s, when the Cruising Division and Sailing Birds training group began, and the Governor-General started the inaugural Sydney–Suva race in 1976. The club then conducted racing on 170 days a year for over 200 entrants — surpassing, its history records, any other yacht club in Australia. It emerged from the 1980s with what one account calls the largest membership and yacht register in the country, marked 75 years in 2014 and still hosts the Sydney Harbour Regatta.