Apollo Bay Sailing Club

About Apollo Bay Sailing Club

Sailing on the edge of the Southern Ocean demands a certain seriousness, but Apollo Bay Sailing Club pairs it with an open door. This small club on the Great Ocean Road supports sailing at every level in and around the bay, and it states plainly that all ages, genders, cultural backgrounds and abilities are welcome — experience and boat ownership optional. It acknowledges Gadubanud country in its formal acknowledgement of country, and junior members hold a seat on the committee, which gathers monthly at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday.

The club's claim to wider fame is its keelboat centrepiece: Flying Fifteen International's Victorian branch counts Apollo Bay's as one of the largest Classic Flying Fifteen fleets anywhere in the world. The twenty-foot keelboat, a 1947 Uffa Fox design, thrives in the bay's demanding water, and on a typical Saturday the fleet numbers between four and eight of them alongside a handful of keelboats and a couple of dinghies, with numbers swelling through December and January. An active cruising membership runs alongside the racers, so the club's boats are as likely to be heading out for a quiet bay sail as rounding marks.

Community infrastructure matters here. The clubhouse at Apollo Bay Harbour doubles as a local events venue — it has hosted Winter Wild festival sessions at its Breakwater Road address — and the club is raising money through the Australian Sports Foundation for a dedicated facility to store its equipment, particularly the duty boats essential to race management, training and support work on the water. It is a club doing a lot with a little, in one of the more spectacular settings in Victorian sailing.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Apollo Bay, VIC