Queensland Cruising Yacht Club

Queensland Cruising Yacht Club (QCYC) at Shorncliffe is a yacht and sailing club that organises racing and events (including the Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race), offers club membership and shore-based facilities, and promotes sailing programs and training. The club website highlights a waterfront restaurant and bar, regular sailing events and series, marina and hardstand facilities, and accessibility sailing (Sailability).

Queensland Cruising Yacht Club does not hold Discover Sailing Centre accreditation, and no Tackers or formal learn-to-sail school is advertised, so anyone expecting a structured dinghy syllabus should look at how this club actually develops sailors: through racing and cruising itself. The club advertises a full calendar across winter and summer, blending racing, cruising passages and skills improvement for all abilities, and the practical pathway for a newcomer is the time-honoured one of crewing.

Berths on boats contesting the club's events expose learners to sail trim, navigation, night work and offshore seamanship in real conditions rather than in a classroom, which suits a club whose identity is built around passage racing. The events themselves form the ladder. The Kingfisher Night Series, established in 1989 by sailors from four bayside clubs and backed by Kingfisher Bay Resort from the outset, sends fleets through four races of roughly 35 nautical miles on Moreton Bay after dark, an ideal step up from day sailing.

The Surf to City Yacht Race brings boats north from Southport to Brisbane, the Bribie Cup adds another passage fixture, and the Vintage Yacht Regatta, known as The Gaffers, has gathered classic and timber yachts since 1976, growing from six entries to a 50th edition sailed in July 2025 that the club describes as one of the country's longest-running gatherings of its kind. At the top of the ladder sits the Brisbane to Gladstone each Easter.

As general context, most Australian keelboat clubs of this type rely on exactly this crew-development model, and prospective sailors are usually welcomed as crew even without their own boat; anyone interested should contact the club directly about current opportunities.

The club's home water is Cabbage Tree Creek, a tidal waterway on Brisbane's bayside at Shorncliffe, where a well-marked channel leads out into Moreton Bay. That position puts the fleet minutes from open bay sailing while keeping the marina sheltered inside the creek. The marina itself provides 62 berths, catering for boats up to 15 metres in length, bookable overnight, weekly or on long-term arrangements, and a generous hardstand caters for power boats and trailer sailors.

Ashore, the clubhouse looks across the creek and the moored fleet, with full bar and restaurant facilities trading Thursday to Sunday, function rooms that host weddings and parties, and live music on Sundays. Out on the water, the club's racing territory splits neatly in two. For the Brisbane to Gladstone, the start line sits in Bramble Bay about two nautical miles east of Shorncliffe Pier, sending the fleet north past the bay islands and up the coast.

The Vintage Yacht Regatta stays closer in, sailing triangular courses laid off the Shorncliffe headland, while the Kingfisher Night Series ranges more widely across Moreton Bay's broad expanse. For a club founded to help sailors explore the bay and the Queensland coast, the geography could hardly be more convenient, and the creek setting gives visiting boats a secure, sheltered berth within easy reach of the open water.

The practical picture for a visiting sailor is simple: tie up inside the creek, walk to the clubhouse for a meal and a drink, and be out through the marked channel and into some of south-east Queensland's most accessible bay and coastal sailing within the hour.

The founding story begins with a failure. Doug Drouyn took his yacht Sea Tang south for the 1947 Sydney to Hobart and retired with a broken boom, but the experience convinced him Queensland needed an ocean race of its own. Rebuffed by Brisbane's existing clubs, he rallied backers inside his music shop at 187 George Street, and at the first official meeting 14 members voted unanimously to form the club in 1948. The opening club race, sailed on Sunday 17 October 1948, ran 17 miles from Peel Island to Bishop Island.

The first Brisbane to Gladstone followed at Easter 1949 despite a cyclone striking Gladstone shortly beforehand: seven vessels started, around 6,000 spectators lined Woody Point, Hoana reached the finish first in 47 hours, 8 minutes and 25 seconds, and Sea Prince took the corrected-time honours. With only two boats carrying radios, Brisbane's Homing Pigeon Club supplied birds to carry position reports back. By 1950 the purse topped £750, said at the time to be the wealthiest yacht race in the Commonwealth, with crowds reportedly reaching 30,000.

In 1955 the start shifted away from Woody Point to Sandgate; two years later Lady Elliott Island became a course mark, rounded to port, and the course has remained essentially unchanged since. The Sinbad Street clubhouse opened on 2 February 1980 after decades of meeting in borrowed premises. Later chapters added colour: Rupert Murdoch took line honours twice with Ilina in 1964 and 1965 and held the race record until 1976; Cyclone Emily's 96-knot winds in 1972 let only five of 25 starters finish, without loss of life; Ivan Holm Snr's Laurabada completed her 50th consecutive race in 2002; the 1998 golden anniversary drew a record fleet of 196 keel yachts, 226 including multihulls, with four sailors from the inaugural race competing.

In 2001 the event became a Centenary of Federation platform, the club won a Queensland Tourism Award in 2008, and Black Jack's 2018 elapsed time of 16 hours, 53 minutes, 57 seconds stands as the monohull record.