Southern Highlands Sailing Club

About Southern Highlands Sailing Club

High above the Shoalhaven lowlands, on a WaterNSW reservoir among the hills behind Nowra, sails a club that cheerfully calls itself the Sailing Club in the Clouds. Southern Highlands Sailing Club has been racing on Fitzroy Falls Reservoir since 1978, and it remains deliberately small: around forty members at last published count, roughly a dozen boats on the water of a Sunday, and an open invitation to families and new residents of the highlands to come and join in.

This is not a class-racing club and makes no apology for it. The fleet is mixed and proudly so — multihulls dominate, with Hobie 16s and 18s, Nacra 5.8s and 14-squares, Windrushes and Maricats the most numerous craft on the reservoir, while the Laser stands as the preferred monohull alongside Spirals and the occasional trailer-sailer. Everything races together on yardstick handicap, and the club highlights the close quarters battles between catamaran skippers and Laser sailors as part of the fun. Even rowing boats are welcome at the club area.

The atmosphere is casual country sailing in the best sense. The season runs from October to April, the club gathers every Sunday between half past ten and half past four, and a modest day or season membership fee is all that stands between a visitor and a start line. There is no learn-to-sail academy, no paid staff, and no permanent clubhouse — just a reservoir, a rescue boat, a barbecue and a group of highland families who have kept Sunday racing alive for more than four decades. For anyone who has moved to Bowral, Moss Vale or the villages around Fitzroy Falls and wondered where the sailors go, the answer is twenty kilometres south-east, up on the dam.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Fitzroy Falls / Southern Highlands (Nowra Road, Fitzroy Falls, NSW)