Bendigo Yacht Club

About Bendigo Yacht Club

The alumni list reads like an America's Cup program. Glenn Ashby — Olympic silver medallist, multiple world champion and wing trimmer on BMW Oracle's America's Cup-winning trimaran — learned to sail at Bendigo Yacht Club, as did A-Class catamaran world champions Allan and Greg Goodall and Nacra world champion Adam Beattie. The club markets Lake Eppalock's waters as, in its own words, "the perfect breeding grounds" for the world's best sailors, and while that is plainly promotional, the names above give it unusual substance for a club based on an irrigation reservoir between Bendigo and Heathcote.

The club itself is a mixed fleet operation — keelboats and dinghies sharing the lake — with a family-centred culture spanning competitive racing, cruising and a full social program. Members enjoy unlimited year-round access to the facilities, day or night, including for private entertaining, which says something about how the place is trusted and used. It runs on the familiar country-club model of working bees and weekend volunteering, and it communicates through a regular newsletter, "Mainsheet", and published race results.

In late 2025 the club recruited a new sail-training team, a signal of renewed investment in the development pipeline that produced those famous graduates. An accredited Australian Sailing Discover Sailing Centre, it balances a busy racing calendar — trophy series, club championship, the annual Ice Breaker Regatta — with cruising and social events, making it as much a lakeside community hub as a competition venue — a place where the caravan stays hitched all summer and the barbecue works as hard as the race officer.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Lake Eppalock, Eppalock, VIC