Hampton Sailing Club

About Hampton Sailing Club

Hampton Sailing Club began with a group of young women, a borrowed shed and a fleet of Sabots. Founded back in 1945 under the name Victorian Ladies Yacht Club, it gave girls and women a place to race at a time when Melbourne's bayside clubs largely didn't — neighbouring Sandringham Yacht Club, for instance, then restricted female membership. Eighty years on, the anniversary acknowledged in federal Parliament by local member Tim Wilson in October 2025, the club is open to all but still carries its founding character: small, volunteer-run, unpretentious and unusually welcoming. It is a one hundred per cent volunteer organisation, with its race management team running Sunday afternoon racing from spring through autumn. The fleet policy is equally distinctive: there are no preferred or sponsored classes, and the club accepts all watercraft types up to five metres in length — with the exception of catamarans — so the start line mixes dinghy classes that would rarely meet elsewhere. Not everyone here races; the club encourages unhurried cruising inside Hampton harbour and up and down the bayside coast just as warmly. The clubhouse sits on the Sandringham foreshore facing Hampton Beach, just west of Hampton Pier, its deck looking out across the bay to the Melbourne skyline, and its social life can be as simple as a communal barbecue dinner on that deck after sailing. Wilson described the club in Parliament as "an active and accessible venue" for the Bayside community — a fair summary of a place that has been lowering the barriers to sailing since 1945.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Hampton, VIC