Geographe Bay Yacht Club

Sailing waters

Geographe Bay is a broad, north-facing sweep of water on the South West coast, sweeping between Capel at its eastern end and Cape Naturaliste at the western one, and it behaves very differently from the open-ocean racing off Fremantle: sheltered, largely free of ocean swell, and governed by the region's summer sea-breeze cycle, which usually builds as the afternoon wears on. Morning glass-offs and reliable afternoon pressure make it superb water for junior training, championship racing and long summer series alike — one reason so many State titles have been decided here.

The club's grounds sit on Margaret Street, West Busselton, directly overlooking that water. The site is shared with the Geographe Outriggers and the Naturaliste Game & Sport Fishing Club, and the acres of lawn between clubhouse and beach give trailer sailors and championship regattas the rigging room that cramped metropolitan clubs can only envy. Busselton's famous jetty — 1.8 kilometres long, begun in 1865 at a modest 161 metres — stands along the foreshore, and the club's original 1959 clubhouse sat at its base, tying the club's geography to the town's best-known landmark.

For cruiser racers, the bay reads like a chart of the region's beauty spots: passage races run west to Meelup and Dunsborough and on toward Cape Naturaliste, where the coastline turns and the water deepens. Visiting boats for Race Week find Port Geographe Marina — a regatta partner — nearby, and the delivery trip from Perth, broken at Mandurah, has become part of the event's own tradition.