Warneet Motor Yacht Club

About Warneet Motor Yacht Club

Some clubs have to earn seniority; Warneet Motor Yacht Club simply states it. "Proudly Westernport's Oldest Yacht Club" is the club's own banner, and by its account it was the first yacht club established on Western Port, the great tidal bay south-east of Melbourne, formed in February 1952. More than seventy years on — the club marked its seventieth anniversary in 2022 — it remains anchored in the same spot on Rutherford Inlet at Warneet, in the City of Casey.

The "Motor" in the name hints at the club's breadth. This is a cruising, racing and social club that opens its doors to non-sailing members too, and the Save the Warneet Jetties group describes it as "as much a community hub as a yacht club", offering a base for community groups across Warneet and the wider City of Casey. The club's self-bestowed nickname is "the jewel in the crown of Warneet" — an immodest phrase, but one backed by decades of local institution-building. It is an affiliated member of Australian Sailing, with Commodore Alex Stroud at the helm and mail directed to PO Box 315, Tooradin.

Its flagship occasion, the Warneet Around French Island Race, is a long-running fixture of Victorian distance sailing and has drawn fields exceeding two hundred yachts in its biggest years. Around that anchor sit trailable-yacht cruises, Friday raffles and barbecues, open-mic afternoons and movie nights — the program of a club that takes its social charter as seriously as its racing, and that has done so since the foreshore-pavilion meetings of 1952.

Services

• Sailing club

Service area

Warneet, Westernport, Victoria