Club in Focus: The Canberra Yacht Club (CYC)

Published Tue 13 Jul 2021

The Canberra Yacht Club (CYC) is a lake-based club in a small capital city that can offer the full range of yacht club activities and functions for its members. The CYC also runs one of the largest sailing schools in the country. Nearly 1300 courses are completed (junior and adult) annually, with excellent rates of retention into long term club membership and participation.

The CYC was formed in 1959 on Lake George, predating the filling of Lake Burley Griffin in 1963. The club took part in the official inauguration of the lake in 1964. The Club moved to a temporary clubhouse on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin but that was destroyed in a fire in 1965. Thankfully the new clubhouse was already under construction and the club moved into its current location on the shores of west basin in 1966.

The CYC has a strong culture of respect, inclusion and a sense of fair play, which is embodied by our members and juniors, and is at the core of everything we do.

Membership:

Canberra has a very transient population with many members joining for one or two seasons while they are posted to the city for work within the public service and defence. Membership consequently rises and falls significantly with these trends. Despite this, the club has a dedicated core of sailing and racing members, who passionately support and give their time to the club and club activities.

Members of the Canberra Yacht Club race on Lake Burley Griffin on a Sunday afternoon and Wednesday twilight during the warmer months of the year (September – April) and fortnightly through winter. The races are mixed fleet, with the various classes divided up into 9 divisions based on boat type, CBH, and yardstick rating, with a mixture of Championship, Pointscore and Sprint style racing. On average, there are 60 boats racing on a Sunday and 35 boats on a Wednesday. Alongside of the regular weekly racing, the club also hosts various annual regattas and championships, and frequently hosts State and National Championships.

During the 2020 COVID lockdown CYC got creative to fill the void for members offering virtual sailing every evening for several months, with weekly regattas attracting many club members and a fierce competition from couches all over Canberra. The CYC also offered online seminars to keep club members engaged on a variety of topics such as boat repair, ocean racing & rules and protests. The CYC’s annual 2020 presentation evening & AGM was held virtually for the first time. Despite the setback of lockdown CYC staff were able to work hard through winter which led to one of the largest seasons for the sailing school in the summer of 2020-2021.

Some of CYC’s special member achievements include:

Matthew Owen/Andrew Reed - 3 Time Australian Flying Fifteen Champion
Terry Peek - Australian Sailing NSW/ACT Lifetime Achievement Award 2020
Ian Ruff - 1976 Bronze medal Olympics 470
Rod Dalgleish - 3 Time Australian 505 Champion / Multiple Top 10 sailor at 505 World Championships / 1996 inductee into the ACT Sport Hall of Fame
Rick Longbottom - 1986 Tasar World Championships 1st.
Catherine Keir/Reagan Minchin - 2019 Special Olympics World Games Silver Medal
Rob Saunders - 2018 Invictus Games Gold Medal

Types of Sailing on offer:

The CYC supports many different classes of boats since there are only a handful of each in the class. Our training fleets are fairly sizeable, with 25 Tacker Optimists, 20 Topper dinghies, 10 Hobie Waves, 10 Optimists, 10 Lasers and 5 RS Quests.

The classes listed below are classes that are regularly represented in the weekly club racing, with many more occasionally joining for a race or two.

Dinghy

• Laser

• Topper

• Optimist

• RS Quest

• 420

• Sharpie

• RS Aero

• Pacer

• Taser

• Sabre

• Flying 15

Multihull

• Viper

• Hobie 17

• F16/18

• Hobie Wave

Trailable

• Castle 650

• Adams 21

• Gem550

• Spider 22/24

• RL24

• Clubman 8

Sportsboat

• VX-One

• Elliot 7.4/7.8

Hansa

• Hansa 303

• Hansa 2.3

Key events:

The CYC hosts several regattas and championship events on an annual basis:

• ACT Optimist Championships - Traveller trophy for NSW Opti sailors, the club regularly receives over 100 boats competing on the lake at this event

• ACT Dinghy Champs - Annual competition for all dinghy classes, usually around 80 boats

• Wild Digital Sportsboat and Trailable Regatta - Weekend long event for trailable and sportsboat classes

• ACT Youth Championships - A chance for the youth of the ACT and surrounding regions to compete, in a mixture of dinghies.

• Chief Ministers Regatta - Annual regatta, supported by the ACT Government, with the Territories Chief Minister rarely missing the event to either press the starting horn or hand out trophies and prizes.

• America’s Mug & Champion of the Lake event - Champion of champions event, leaders of the different divisions from the weekly racing series from both Canberra-based yacht clubs race off in Hansa 303s to determine the champion of the lake for the season.

The CYC annual Buoyed Up dinner is another key event on the calendar which is a fundraiser event for the CYC’s Buoyed Up program, which gives disadvantaged and at-risk children in the ACT the opportunity to build resilience and self-confidence while learning to sail through the Tackers program.

Programs on offer:

The CYC Sailing School offers a full range of dinghy courses and experiences for all ages.

• Tackers 1, 2 and 3

• Out There Sailing 1 and 2

• Start Sailing 1, 2 & Better Sailing

• Discover Sailing Experiences

• Green Fleet Sailing

• Start Powerboating, Powerboat Handling and Safetyboat

• Sailability

• Buoyed Up

The CYC Sailing School runs junior courses on a weekly basis during Terms 1 and 4 as well as week-long programs during the school holidays. Adult sailing courses take place over two weeks. The sailing school also runs the Buoyed Up program for disadvantaged and at-risk youth, giving students from schools all over the ACT a chance to experience sailing when they otherwise would never get the chance.

The CYC is also expanding its involvement in the SheSails program and hope to build on successful events in previous seasons to make this a regular part of the club’s program.

CYC’s biggest recent success story is the expansion of its inclusion programs; Sailability and Buoyed Up. These programs are designed to offer sailing to the wider community, particularly to people that wouldn’t normally get the opportunity.

Sailability ACT merged with the CYC in 2017, since then both organisations have greatly benefitted from the partnership. Sailability ACT has benefitted from the larger exposure, and more available volunteers. The CYC gained dedicated and passionate sailors to join in the Hansa fleets on Wednesdays and Sundays. The Sailability sailors have become some of the most frequent and regular sailors at the CYC and it has been great to see the openness and warmth that both communities have engaged with. The merge culminated in the CYC running the Hansa Nationals in Easter of 2021, one of the first regattas after the Covid shutdown, demonstrating how far both organisations have come. This event attracted nearly 40 entries from across Australia.

Buoyed Up is a program supported by the ACT Government and the CYC that gives disadvantaged children the opportunity to go sailing. The CYC sailing school takes up to four classes from Years 2-5 for a weekly lesson in Terms 1 and 4 from a range of schools in the ACT. The kids are taught the Tackers 1 syllabus and gain many valuable skills like teamwork and problem solving, in an environment that they normally would not get the opportunity to experience.

Current Commodore: Sue Hart

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