Coffin Bay Yacht Club

About Coffin Bay Yacht Club

Fifty years of sailing on the Eyre Peninsula deserved a proper celebration, and Coffin Bay Yacht Club marked the occasion the only way a sailing club knows how: with boats on the water. From 12 to 17 April 2025 the club ran a week-long anniversary regatta that folded in the South Australian Heron and 125 state titles and drew classes ranging from Optimists through to A Class catamarans. It capped a half-century that began, by the club's own telling, with an offer from Phil Hurrell to teach John Rogers to sail — a generous gesture that grew into a public meeting, twenty-two inaugural members and a joining fee of two dollars. The club that officially formed on 26 January 1975 now sits within Australian Sailing's smallest affiliation fee band, yet it has hosted national championship racing and reached the finals of the 2025 Clubs SA Clubs and Community Awards, in both the Medium Club of the Year category and a community and heritage category. Run as a not-for-profit by volunteers alongside a small staff, it keeps meals reasonably priced and opens its clubhouse to functions as a venue for hire. The Australian Sailing club directory characterises it as a mixed bay sailing and cruising club, which suits a town whose identity is so closely tied to the water. For a small regional community, the clubhouse also serves a civic purpose few sporting venues can claim: it is an official refuge of last resort in an emergency, equipped with an automatic generator so the lights stay on when the town's do not.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Coffin Bay, SA