About Port Hunter 16ft Sailing Skiff Club
Across the harbour from the Newcastle CBD, at Stockton, sits a club that has guarded the 16ft skiff tradition on this waterway since 1909. Port Hunter 16ft Sailing Skiff Club counts itself among Australia's oldest continuously operating skiff clubs, with honour rolls and records stretching back to 1913–14, and Saturday-afternoon racing has run here, interrupted only by the Second World War, for well over a century. The 16-footer remains the headline act from September to April, backed by MG14s and a catamaran division that has run continuously since the early 1980s, while Flying Ants occupy Saturday mornings. The club's alumni carry genuine weight in Australian sailing lore: Ben Lexcen — then Bob Miller, the man who would go on to design the winged-keel Australia II of America's Cup fame — had his first sail in a 16ft skiff here, crewing with Neville de Glorian in IRIS. The 1995 NACRA 5.8 Catamaran World Championship fell to club pair Chris Russell and Jeff Jordan. Yet for all that pedigree, the modern dress code could hardly be more relaxed — thongs, the club notes, are practically obligatory footwear — a pointed contrast to the top hats, jackets and ties once required aboard the 22-footers of the 1890s. Family names thread through the records — Watters, Newton, Devereaux, Gore, Holmes — and the roll of life members, Arthur Holmes and Max Preston among them, reads like a genealogy of Newcastle sailing. The club championship itself was renamed in Holmes's honour from 2008–09. Since 2019 the club's sailing has also formed part of SailFest Newcastle, the harbour regatta founded by Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club with city support.
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Service area: Stockton, NSW
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