Shelley Sailing Club

Sailing waters

Everything about Shelley's home water argues for the club's chosen style. The Canning River at Shelley offers the quiet, protected water of a broad suburban river — no ocean swell, a world away from exposed coastal chop — just steady reaches of open river in Perth's southern suburbs. That kind of water has practical virtues a family club exploits fully: a capsize is an inconvenience rather than an emergency, young sailors can be turned loose in Minnows within sight of the clubhouse, and race officials in the air-conditioned start box can read the breeze off the club's fixed anemometer before the first warning signal.

The club's footprint sits off Riverton Drive, with the social clubroom and boat store beside the launching area, while mail goes to a Parkwood post office box. This is also carefully managed water: Shelley Sailing Club appears among the stakeholders in the State Government's boating strategy covering the Swan-Canning riverpark, sharing the river system with paddlers, rowers and power craft under a coordinated plan. Nor does the club sail in class isolation.

Its classes pages map a network of sister clubs racing the same boats around the state — Maylands, Geographe Bay, Koombana Bay and Princess Royal for Lasers; for the Windrush, clubs at Walpole, Denmark, Jervoise Bay and Augusta — so a Shelley sailor who travels to a country regatta finds familiar competition waiting on the start line. It is the classic river-club bargain, struck with unusual success: modest water, used brilliantly, across fifty seasons and counting.