Carcoar Dam Sailing Club

About Carcoar Dam Sailing Club

Carcoar Dam Sailing Club appears to be a local sailing club based at Carcoar Dam in New South Wales. The club's name and website indicate it runs organised sailing activities and serves recreational sailors in the Carcoar area; membership details and event information are likely available via the club website.

It appears on Australian Sailing's 2026-27 affiliation update in Band 22. Public contact information is available via phone, email, website.

Training and sailing programs

The big news at Carcoar is that training has just gone professional. The club recently secured Australian Sailing Discover Sailing Centre accreditation — a landmark for a club of this size — with five members freshly qualified as sailing instructors to get Learn to Sail programs going for both adults and children, scheduled to begin in late 2026. A NSW Sport grant application aims to maintain the training fleet and add two larger training boats, and Commodore Ren Reimers is herself an accredited Australian Sailing Coach, giving the program credentialed leadership at the top. For a self-described humble club, it is a serious statement of intent.

The fleet backing that ambition is already on hand. Members have use of club dinghies — Lasers, Spirals and Open Bics — along with windsurfers, kayaks and a rescue boat, and the club runs the Australian Sailing Powerboat Handling Certificate plus Safety Boat Operator courses, building the volunteer skills that keep country sailing safe. Sailability Central West operates through the club, extending access to sailors with disabilities, and each November's Open Day throws the gates wide with demonstration sails, a coffee cart, a sausage sizzle and membership enquiries — with a Sailability day proposed in the 2025–26 season.

On Sundays through the warmer months, training blends seamlessly into participation: racing and social cruising from ten in the morning, a Club Championship spread across the seasonal series, and a deliberately inclusive fleet policy where catamarans, monohulls and trailer-sailors all start together. The annual regatta — three races Saturday, two on Sunday, early-bird entry at fifty dollars a vessel, dinner at the clubhouse — gives developing sailors a genuine event to aim at, and the away trips to Wallerawang and Oberon expose members to fleets and waters beyond their own dam.

Club history

The club's story begins not at Carcoar but at Lake Canobolas, Orange, where its predecessor sailed through the 1960s. When Carcoar Dam — construction started 1969, completed 1970 — filled on the Belubula River, the club followed the water, relocating in 1973 and taking the name Carcoar Dam Sailing Club. It has sailed the dam ever since, making 1973 the date the club itself headlines as its establishment, just three years after the wall was finished.

Inland clubs live and die by rainfall, and Carcoar's hardest stretch came with the drought years, when minimal water levels kept the lake barely sailable and the club's regatta disappeared for more than seven years. The comeback, when it arrived, was emphatic: over the weekend of 25–26 February 2012 the club staged its first regatta in more than seven years, drawing more than forty boats for five races across four classes — including the Maricat National Titles — with about eighty people attending and many camping on site.

Ash and Andrew Diver, the latter a past club junior, organised the event with Jono and Ian, under then-Commodore Don MacLennan, and a roll-call of Central West businesses from Dairy Park to Canobolas Caravan & Marine chipped in as sponsors. It remains the template for the club's March regatta today.

The most recent chapter has been about consolidation and growth. Under Commodore Ren Reimers and Vice Commodore Ash Johnson, the club achieved Australian Sailing Discover Sailing Centre accreditation, put five members through instructor qualifications and laid plans for Learn to Sail programs from late 2026, backed by a grant application for new training boats. Sailability Central West operating through the club has deepened its community role, and the November Open Day has become a fixture.

From a 1960s lake club that packed its boats and followed a new dam into the hills, Carcoar Dam Sailing Club has grown into the sailing hub of the Blayney district — proof that drought, distance and an absent power bill are no obstacles to a determined country club.