Moreton Bay Trailer Boat Club

A marina located in Manly (Brisbane Bayside) offering a range of shoreside facilities for visiting and berth-holding recreational boats.

Facilities described on the website include multiple berth sizes with long-term rental and short-term visitor berths, a travel lift and hardstand haul-out area, on-site fuel (diesel, ULP & LPG) with specified office hours, showers/toilets and coin laundry, secure parking (including undercover for berth owners), and a clubhouse bistro with licensed bar. The marina team handles bookings and berth enquiries via the marina office.

The club's Sailing Group is the easiest way into sailing at MBTBC. It organises races and cruises throughout the year, with club championship races between August and May and fun races — including twilight races and social events — and cruises running year-round. Races are often shared with partner clubs such as Wynnum Manly Sailing Club, The Trailer Sailer Club of Queensland, Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron and the Multihull Yacht Club Queensland, and several MBTBC passage races count towards the Manly Combined Clubs series from February to November.

For formal learn-to-sail and powerboat courses, the RQYS Sailing Academy is just along the Manly waterfront. Our guide to sailing Moreton Bay and its islands is a good introduction to the local waters.

MBTBC occupies the northern corner of Manly Boat Harbour, reached via the same dredged, beaconed entrance channel that serves the whole harbour; the channel across Waterloo Bay shallows quickly outside the marks, so inbound boats keep to the leads, particularly on the bigger ebb tides. Inside, the club's fuel pontoon is the first useful landmark, picked out by following the yellow line from the main channel.

The practical advantage of this marina over its harbour neighbours is shore-side: Manly Harbour Village is a few minutes' walk and covers the cruising essentials, a minimart, bakery, butcher, chemist, post office, newsagent, doctor and restaurants, with Muirs chandlery close enough to carry a gearbox back from. Buses run to Wynnum Plaza, and the train from Manly reaches Brisbane's CBD in about 45 minutes, making this a favourite staging post for interstate cruisers.

Out on the bay, Wellington Point and its low-tide sand walk to King Island are just south, St Helena Island and Green Island lie an easy sail to the north-west, and the classic anchorage at Horseshoe Bay on Peel Island fills with club boats every fine weekend. The club's fishing section knows the bay's artificial reefs and beacons intimately, and the clubhouse noticeboard is a decent intelligence source for what is biting.

Afternoon north-easterly sea breezes are the summer pattern and can make the harbour entrance choppy on the ebb; winter westerlies flatten everything. For newcomers, the club's casual berthing and open clubhouse make it the easiest soft landing in the harbour, and the bistro deck at sunset is where local knowledge gets traded.

The Moreton Bay Trailer Boat Club began, as its name insists, as a club for trailer boat owners, and that egalitarian origin still shows in a marina that has grown into one of the largest inside Manly Boat Harbour. From humble beginnings the MBTBC Marina has expanded to around 350 floating berths at 1 Wyvernleigh Close, on the northern side of the harbour basin, with a licensed clubhouse above it that serves bistro meals seven days a week to berth holders, members and the boating public alike.

The atmosphere is unpretentious and heavily local: fishing sections organise competitions, cruising boats are welcomed for short stays, and the clubhouse deck fills with the same faces most weekends. Unlike the squadron across the harbour, berthing here is tied directly to club membership for longer stays; anyone renting for three months or more must become a full member of the Moreton Bay Trailer Boat Club, a structure that keeps the marina's community tight-knit and its rates grounded.

The berth mix tells the story of the membership: monohull pens from 10 to 17 metres, and a substantial multihull allocation running from 10 metres right up to 24 metres, reflecting how strongly Moreton Bay sailors have taken to catamarans and trimarans. Visitors consistently single out the location: of the three marinas inside Manly Boat Harbour that take casuals, MBTBC sits closest to the Manly Harbour Village shops and to Muirs chandlery, which for a cruising yacht mid-refit is worth more than any amenity list.

It is, in short, a boatie's marina run by a club that still remembers the trailer ramp.