Goolwa Vintage Boat Club

About Goolwa Vintage Boat Club

Plenty of clubs keep an old boat or two as ornaments; the Goolwa Vintage Boat Club keeps an entire fleet in racing trim. Based at Goolwa on the lower Murray, the club began life as the Vintage Boats Association and exists to keep historic wooden craft doing what they were built to do. It is affiliated with Australian Sailing in the smallest fee band, Band 22, on both the state and national lists — and it matters to get the identity right, because Goolwa has three separate affiliated clubs. This one is entirely distinct from the Goolwa Regatta Yacht Club and the Goolwa Sailing Club, though its boats race in mixed company with the former and its activities are also listed under the umbrella of the Goolwa Aquatic Club at 92 Barrage Road, which counts Goolwa Vintage Boats among its five constituent clubs. Much of what is known about the club's past comes from its long-time secretary and record-keeper, Geoff Byrnes, whose careful preservation of documents gives this small club an unusually firm documentary footing. The fleet itself is the attraction. Some of the boats launched in the 1800s are still afloat and competing on the river around Goolwa, and they have been joined by refugees from around the country — a pair of Derwent Class yachts from Hobart and the former Sorrento Couta Boat Leeuwin among them. A third-party directory pegs membership at around three hundred dollars and describes friendly vintage racing and social gatherings on the Fleurieu Peninsula, though that listing is unverified. What no source disputes is the philosophy: these boats are, as one wooden-boat writer put it, never treated like classic collectibles.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Goolwa, South Australia