Royal Motor Yacht Club Toronto

Few Australian clubs can claim a world speed record and six world sailing championships from the same waterfront, but the Royal Motor Yacht Club Toronto can. Housed at "Lake Holme", the former residence of Arnott's Biscuits founder William Arnott, on the western shore of Lake Macquarie, the club occupies one of the Hunter's most gracious boating addresses — a nineteenth-century waterfront home wrapped in modern club facilities, with what members happily describe as breathtaking views across the lake. Around 2,500 members belong today, and the club functions as much as a dining and functions venue — weddings, charity nights, reunions — as a sailing club.

Yet the sailing runs deep. An active sail boat committee races yachts twice a week, and the club's pedigree in the 505 dinghy class is extraordinary: RMYC Toronto crews won six 505 World Championships between 1983 and 2002, and the club says it has produced sailors who went on to become Olympians. Layered over that is the powerboating past — club member Ken Warby set the outright world water speed record of 511.11 km/h aboard Spirit of Australia in 1978, a mark that, per the club's history, still stands.

Ceremonial tradition is taken seriously: at inception the club enforced uniform dress on race days, and on formal occasions Flag Officers still turn out in Naval Summer Whites or Mess Uniform. Friendly rivalry comes via the R K Robertson Interclub Series against Lake Macquarie Yacht Club and Wangi Amateur Sailing Club. It is a club of contrasts — speedboat roar and dinghy finesse, heritage rooms and a hard-working race calendar.

The friendliest on-ramp here costs nothing at all. The club's Summer Friday twilight fun series is free to enter, carries no prizes and no handicaps, and is aimed squarely at beginners — a no-pressure evening sail where newcomers can learn the rhythm of a race course without any consequence beyond a good night on the water. It is a quietly clever piece of program design, funnelling the curious into a fleet that races twice a week through the season. Accredited dinghy instruction is not the club's game; on Lake Macquarie that role sits with the Discover Sailing Centre at neighbouring Lake Macquarie Yacht Club in Belmont, leaving RMYC Toronto to concentrate on its keelboat racing culture.

That culture is rich and year-round. Spring and summer bring Saturday pointscore racing in two divisions from 1.30pm, Wednesday twilight non-spinnaker racing on courses set in view of the clubhouse, and the Friday fun series; winter keeps Saturdays alive with pointscore racing alternating spinnaker scratch starts and non-spinnaker sweepstake handicaps, plus a Wednesday winter pointscore from 1.30pm.

Interclub competition thrives: the R K Robertson Series pits the club against Lake Macquarie Yacht Club and Wangi Amateur Sailing Club for the RKR Shield, while combined Windward-Leeward days and four Combined Long Course events each season are run cooperatively with those neighbours in three divisions. The headline fixtures give the calendar its shape — the 30 Mile Race down the lake past Pulbah Island, the Heaven Can Wait Charity Regatta each November with its one-lap dash, 12-hour and 24-hour races, the Police and Emergency Services Regatta, and the late-August Northshore and Adams Yachts regattas.

Lake Holme stands absolute waterfront at Toronto, on Lake Macquarie's western shore — a heritage residence turned clubhouse, with a marina berthing members' boats and race starts run between the RMYC club mark and the Toronto mark just offshore. The summer twilight courses are deliberately set in view of the clubhouse, so the evening fleet becomes part of the spectacle for those watching from the lawns with a drink in hand. The club opens at ten every morning except Christmas Day and Good Friday, closing between nine and midnight depending on the day, and it has long been a hub for the West Lakes business community as well as its sailors.

The sailing water itself is Lake Macquarie, the vast coastal lagoon whose scale regularly surprises visitors — the club's 30 Mile Race, open to all clubs around the lake, runs from the northern end as far south as Pulbah Island and Sunken Rock and still covers only part of the system. That expanse gives Toronto's race officers room for genuine long-course racing, and the combined series with Lake Macquarie Yacht Club and Wangi Amateur Sailing Club spreads fleets across the lake's full geography in three divisions.

Conditions on the lake suit twilight and weekend racing alike, with summer breezes settling into reliable afternoon patterns and the western shore enjoying the clubhouse-front stadium racing the club has made its own. For visiting boats, the combination of a member marina, a heritage clubhouse known for good food at reasonable prices, and a lake big enough to swallow a week of cruising makes Toronto one of the more complete club destinations in the Hunter.

The parent club was born on 6 July 1905, when a group of motorboat owners met at the Aaron's Exchange Hotel in Sydney to form The Motor Boat Club of New South Wales, promoting the new sport through racing and social events. In 1927 King George V granted the Royal prefix — the first such honour bestowed on a motorboat club beyond the United Kingdom — and that same year the club pushed north: on Saturday 1 November 1927 the Royal Motor Yacht Club Newcastle Branch opened at Lake Holme, Toronto, the former waterfront residence of William Arnott of Arnott's Biscuits fame.

The branch has traded there ever since, save for six wartime years when the RAAF took it over as a recreation centre for crews from the Rathmines Catalina flying boat base across the lake. In 2000 the branch was renamed Toronto, after the town it had served for seventy-three years.

The early club ran cruiser and powerboat racing with, its history records, "a very high degree of nautical ceremony and prestige", uniform dress mandatory on race days. The Queen's Birthday regattas became highlights of the Australian speedboat calendar, drawing boats from all over the country, and the club produced local, state, national and international speedboat champions — capped by Ken Warby's 511.11 km/h world water speed mark, set aboard Spirit of Australia in 1978.

Rising insurance costs and noise concerns eventually ended competitive speedboat racing on the lake, but the cruising section carried that tradition on. The sailing pedigree is just as gilt-edged: Toronto 505 crews won six World Championships — Terry Kyrwood and Reg Crick in Adelaide in 1983, Dean Blatchford and Tommy Woods in Germany in 1984, Gary Bruniges and Greg Gardiner in Japan in 1985, and Chris and Darren Nicholson in 1992, 1994 and 2002, from Santa Cruz to Durban to Fremantle.