Gladstone Yacht Club

About Gladstone Yacht Club

There is a yacht in Australian ocean racing folklore called Wistari — designed and built in Gladstone in 1965 by Port Curtis Sailing Club yachtsman Noel Patrick, winner of the Brisbane to Gladstone on four occasions from 1971 to 1982, and holder of the race's aggregate point-score trophy. That single boat says a great deal about the club that produced her: practical, self-reliant, and deeply woven into one of Queensland's great offshore contests. Port Curtis Sailing Club, which trades publicly as the Gladstone Yacht Club from its clubhouse at 1 Goondoon Street, has been the finishing destination of the Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race since the event's earliest years, and its members were active supporters of the very first race in 1949.

The club operates in a setting few sailing organisations can claim — within the multi-commodity Port of Gladstone, inside the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, where bulk carriers and cruising yachts share the same horizon. From its waterfront base on Auckland Creek, with a licensed clubhouse and harbour-view veranda, the club runs an accredited Australian Sailing training school, a Saturday-afternoon sailing program, and a fleet that ranges from racing and cruising yachts, both monohull and multihull, down to Sabots, Lasers, Impulses and O'pen BICs, plus an original Diamond and a Moth.

Port Curtis carries its years well. Established in March 1941 under the name Port Curtis Aquatic Club, and taking its present name in 1947, it has weathered wartime restrictions, a cyclone, a decade-long volunteer clubhouse build and a late-1970s amalgamation to emerge as a heritage-listed institution that has twice been named Best Small Social Club in reciprocal-club listings. Under commodore Ian Williams, it remains what it has always been: Gladstone's sailing home.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Gladstone, QLD