The Cairns Yacht Club - Ellis Beach facility has recently been updated with renovations to the club house and all its facilities due to the hard work of the caretaker Perry Pradal and many of the members who regularly sail there.

Ellis Beach provides an ideal venue for all sailing dinghies especially "Off the beach" catamarans such as the Nacra F18's, the Nacra 4.5's and the Hobbie 16's as well as all performance monohulls. The sailing area between Double Island and the beach provides sea room for regatta courses that would be the envy of most sailing clubs around Australia. Launching off the beach is well protected from the prevailing SE winds and the rigging area is mostly shaded. With prior arrangements with the caretaker Perry Pradal, boat storage is available.

Club Racing

The Club is holding races on the second Sunday of each month with both morning and afternoon races. (See calendar attachment). Racing is open to all experienced sailors. Cost is $5.00 per boat. A $2.00 sausage sizzle is available at lunch.

Our close links with the Port Douglas Sailing Club continue and we also support their sailing day which is the fourth Sunday of the month so hopefully an increasing number of sailing craft should be seen at both the locations.

Families and visitors are welcome to take advantage of the wonderful views and watch the on the water activities from the comfort of the shaded verandah.

More from the pen of Don Boldiston:

The strong heading hopefully has grabbed your attention so I consider it is time for all members to realise that we do have this facility and with plenty of hard work by our sailing caretaker Perry Pradal the facility is even improving.

Over the last five years the number of people sailing catamarans has decreased so Perry decided to choose the most common form of Catamaran the Hobie 16 and try and get some class sailing happening again. He now has three boats at Ellis coupled with two or three privately owned ones in the area so some good racing is inevitable.

To further promote the cat racing the sons of our nine times Australian Champion Cobra sailor Darryl Beattie have both individually purchased A Nacra Illusion F18 catamaran. This is the world class two person catamaran which has attracted all the best catamaran sailors in the world as well as Australia. With the next Australian title being held in Perth at Christmas Adam and Troy Beattie are working towards being competitive by then. Adam has spent the last two years racing these high performance spinnaker carrying cats with several well known Nacra sailors and now is intent to show his skills.

The Club is holding races on the second Sunday of each month with both a morning and afternoon race. To encourage more interest in "off the beach" sailing any monohull that turns up will always be welcome and can join in the racing. Our close links with the Port Douglas Sailing Club continues and we also support their sailing day which is the last Sunday of the month so hopefully an increasing number of sailing craft should be seen at both the locations.

While I have described the activities of the sailing side of the club a large number of people frequent Ellis Beach as part of the "paddling" fraternity these keen fit people are seen out there in the major long boats coupled with a variety of smaller craft all propelled by the paddle. Thus Ellis Beach is the perfect place for any member to enjoy our top facility.

Attachments:

CYC "Off the Beach Sailing" Calendar	[ ]	62 Kb
MEMBERS_XMAS_PARTY	[MEMBERS_XMAS_PARTY]	595 Kb