Southern Highlands Sailing Club

About Southern Highlands Sailing Club

Southern Highlands Sailing Club appears to be a community sailing club operating in Fitzroy Falls, New South Wales. The organisation likely runs organised sailing activities and member-focused programs from that locality.

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

Training and sailing programs

Honesty first: Southern Highlands Sailing Club runs no formal learn-to-sail program. There is no Tackers fleet, no Discover Sailing Centre accreditation, and no structured junior pathway on record — a common reality for small volunteer clubs on inland water, where the membership base is simply too thin to sustain accredited instruction. What the club offers instead is the oldest sailing education there is: turn up, rig your boat, and race against people who know the water.

That racing is the program. Mixed-fleet starts go away at one and three o'clock each Sunday in season, with the fleet chasing two perpetual trophies — a Commodore's Cup, plus a season-long Point Score — both settled on yardstick handicaps so that a Nacra and a Laser can fight for the same silverware. The format keeps the barrier to entry low: any dinghy, catamaran or trailer-sailer can join in, and the handicap system means a family arriving with an ageing Maricat is racing meaningfully from the first weekend rather than trailing a one-design fleet they cannot afford to join.

Safety on the water is handled by the club's rescue boat, and members holding a current boat licence are encouraged to take a turn keeping the aquatic environment safe — another way newcomers get folded into the life of the club. In practice, skills transfer here the way they always have in country clubs: rigging help in the car park, crewing spots on the bigger cats, and fifty Sundays a season of short, sharp handicap racing.

The multihull-heavy fleet is a genuine asset in that regard, because two-up catamarans are natural teaching platforms, with room for an experienced hand and a learner on the same trampoline. It is informal, unstructured and entirely dependent on volunteers — and it has worked, uninterrupted, since 1978.

Club history

The club's recorded story begins in 1978 at Fitzroy Falls, when a group of local sailors formed Southern Highlands Sailing Club and got their inaugural 1978–79 season away to what the surviving account calls a great success. Bryan Fryer was elected the first Commodore, with Robert Jones as first Secretary, and the founding-era fee structure tells its own story about the club's intentions: ten dollars for an individual membership, ten dollars to register a boat. From day one this was built to be affordable, informal and open.

The timing was no accident. The Southern Highlands was growing steadily through the late seventies as tree-changers and commuting families moved into the Bowral-Moss Vale district, and a reservoir twenty minutes away offered the only sizeable sailing water between the highlands and the coast. Fitzroy Falls Reservoir, managed then as now as part of the Sydney water supply system, was already open for low-impact recreation, and a mixed-fleet sailing club was a natural fit for a waterway where no single class could muster the numbers for one-design racing.

The multihull character of the fleet established itself early and never left. By the time of the club's 34th year, around 2012, Hobies, Nacras, Windrushes and Maricats were the dominant craft, with the Laser the monohull of choice, and membership sat at about forty with a dozen boats racing regularly. That year Commodore Greg Longhurst was leading a committee focused on growth, targeting new highland residents and young families — the same constituency the club courts today with its Sailing Club in the Clouds nickname and its open invitation to day members.

Milestones beyond the 34th anniversary are not publicly documented; the club communicates mainly through its Facebook presence and lets the Sunday racing speak for itself. What the record does show is continuity: same reservoir, same Sunday rhythm, same handicap fleet, and a founding formula — cheap, casual, family-first — that has never needed changing.