Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club

About Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club

Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club is a Queensland sailing or boating organisation associated with Noosaville, QLD. It appears on Australian Sailing's 2026-27 Queensland affiliated-club schedule at Band 13, which provides a current governing-body verification signal. Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club appears to be a local yacht and rowing club based in Noosaville, Queensland. The organisation’s name and website indicate it operates as a community sailing and rowing club serving recreational boaters and club members in the Noosaville area.

Contact, website and location data in this enriched record were retained from the source dataset and updated where a reliable current public source was located; source and verification columns show the evidence and remaining gaps.

Training and sailing programs

The program that defines the club is its children's sailing pathway, which the club describes as the best in Queensland — and which local reporting has been happy to repeat. Its engine is the Schools Program: seven local schools take part, attendances passed three thousand by 2022, and the Noosa Pengari Steiner School's Year 7 students attend an annual learn-to-sail course culminating in a week-long camp spent sailing around Moreton Bay.

Sailability, the club's program for sailors with disability, runs alongside — complete with a refurbished beach wheelchair to get sailors to the water's edge — and the training fleet is purpose-assembled: a Stratus 580 trailer sailor handles adult lessons, Sailability and school groups, four Vagabond dinghies carry the school learn-to-sail load, and two RIBs bought during 2021-22 handle safety and coaching support.

Whether the club holds Discover Sailing Centre accreditation was not confirmed in the sources reviewed, though the volume of delivery speaks for itself. The rowing half of the clubhouse is equally developed, with a pathway running from Learn to Row through adult club rowing, social and recreational outings, and on to competition training. The boathouse holds everything from singles to quads, covering both sculling and sweep rowing, and the masters ranks span competitors aged from 27 into their seventies.

On the water, sailors race every second Saturday all year round while rowers train on Saturday mornings and gather for a Big Boat Breakfast — octuple sculls included — on the last Sunday of each month. The pathway shows results: NYRC sailor Sophie Honeyburne's team finished second at the 2021 Mooloolaba Women's Keelboat Regatta, and a combined Sunshine Coast team representing the club and Mooloolaba finished runner-up in the 2015 NSW Youth Match Racing Championship, held at the CYCA.

Club history

The club's roots run back to the 1950s and the Noosa River Sailing Club, in whose dinghies sailors such as Don Reed cut their teeth. The Noosa Yacht Club's first official meeting followed in 1958, held close by the Albert Street corner of Gympie Terrace, and in September 1961 the first clubhouse opened at 222 Gympie Terrace, the honours performed by Stanley Adams, chairman of the Noosa Shire Council, together with Commodore Walter Hayter. As membership grew the building was extended and the name settled as the Noosa Yacht Club.

Rowing arrived in 1981 with the formation of the Noosa Rowing Club — its boats having previously been stored at Munna Point — and in February 1984 the two clubs agreed to combine, incorporating as Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club. The present home owes its existence to four men: Don Reed, Dr Nick Kahl, Simon Newcomb and Billy Griffiths, who secured the riverfront land at 142 Gympie Terrace.

The first sod was turned by Noel Playford, the council chairman, and Peter D'Arcey, the club's Vice Commodore and Honorary Treasurer, with construction managed by Ron Slinn and building contractor Ron Scholes. The new clubhouse opened on 1 April 1994 — Easter Saturday — the ribbon cut by Steve Hoban, regional manager of the Queensland Department of Tourism, Sport and Racing, alongside Commodore John Sheriff and Honorary Secretary Bruce Whitfield, while sailors and rowers marked the day by sailing past both the old and new clubhouses.

The building's 25th anniversary, due in 2019, was delayed by Covid and finally celebrated with an open day in August 2022. In January 2026 the club closed for its largest renovation since inception, removing gaming, with reopening due by 23 February 2026. The 2025-26 committee is led by Commodore Grenville Snowdon, with Brian Knott as Vice Commodore, Kerrie Cooney as Honorary Secretary and John Edginton as Rowing Captain.