Welcome to Cruising at MHYC!

Not all sailing is racing.

The cruisers also care about:

  • Keeping the boat and crew safe, especially when short-handed sailing. A majority of the club’s safety auditors are from the cruising group. In general, the cruisers would more rarely need to claim on their insurances as they reef the sails earlier, and also avoid the worst weather conditions.
  • Adventures near and far. Exploring new areas with your boat. There are cruisers from MHYC who have circumnavigated the globe. And for some, a trip to Pittwater is adventure enough, and then there is everything in between.
  • The learning journey. Sharing best practices and gradually becoming more confident in boat handling, boat maintenance, navigation etc, to take on more challenging trips whilst keeping your budget under control.
  • The social aspect. The cruisers do like to enjoy life, having a BBQ on the boat, and sharing some good food, and a couple of tasty beverages in the company of others. We also organise on-land social events, mostly at the MHYC facilities. We like to include our families in the sailing.

Many cruisers are also racers, and as you know – if there’s another boat in sight on the water there’s always a race on. The cruisers just don’t have the same priorities on minimising boat weight and constantly buying the latest tech sails.

If you feel this is something you want to learn more about or be part of, please come along to one of our monthly meetings to find out more. See the events calendar!

Subscribe to our newsletter, The Compass Rose

Recent articles

Messing about on the River Medway

Messing about on the River Medway

It was at Foys, the restaurant at the Flying Squadron, where us Middle Harbour Yacht Club Cruisers had our annual Long Lunch, where I read a little bit of history about the club on one of the plaques on the wall. Strange that it couldn’t be had at our own club.It...

Voyage to the end of the world

Voyage to the end of the world

In October I enjoyed a cruise to the end of the world and beyond on the MS Fram. She is the smallest of the three Hurtigruten line ships which sail in South America. We sailed from Valparaiso, the closest port to Santiago and a really interesting city in its own...

Volcanic Autopilot!

Volcanic Autopilot!

Listening to Lisa Blair presenting her ideas of the past and future, she was talking about building a new boat in volcanic fibres and that triggered my interest. What are these fibres and how good are they?? After some research I found more info about them, and the...

Pittwater to Coomera on a cat

Pittwater to Coomera on a cat

Through the Facebook group "Sydney Sailing Crew Finder" I found Dave, who needed some crew to help him get his 40ft Fountaine Pajot catamaran "Pourpre" from Pittwater to Coomera. As he put 'no previous experience required' in the ad he got about a hundred responses in...

Tapas-Tie-Up October 2023

Tapas-Tie-Up October 2023

The theme for this year’s Tapas Tie Up was the South Pacific. Nine boats rafted up at Sugarloaf Bay. Everyone went to great effort with costumes. We had movie stars, islanders (one in particular wearing very little), the navy, and resort guests. Boat decorating turned...