About Portland Yacht Club
Portland wears its age lightly. The club promotes its home as Victoria's second-oldest town, and Portland Yacht Club carries that maritime inheritance onto the water every week — a family-centred, mixed-fleet sailing club on the Portland harbour foreshore, where beginners share the ramp with hardened offshore sailors. The club states its values plainly — "confidence, independence, excellence, participation, community spirit and respect" — and its program is built to deliver each of them, from seven-year-olds in club Optimists to keelboat crews finishing twilight races as the sun drops over the bay.
The club credits its home conditions with sharpening its sailors. Portland's turbulent weather and strong southern oceans, the club says, have produced "many successful ocean racers and Australian championship holders" — and the regional record backs the claim's substance. Yachting Western Victoria, the association founded in Portland on 31 October 1959, counts Olympian Paul McKenzie and multiple world champions, including in the A Class catamaran, among the region's products, with national and state titles spread across Fireball, Taipan, RL24, Minnow and Flying Ant classes. Portland YC is a member of that association and one of its anchor clubs.
Current leadership keeps the operation personal: Commodore Les Thomas heads a committee that also includes Luke Donovan as vice commodore, Donna Hendy as rear commodore, Debb Oakley as secretary and Amanda Macdonald as treasurer. The club sails under the Po prefix and is affiliated with Australian Sailing. Local businesses — from the Port of Portland to the Harbour Lights Snack Bar — back the club's events, a sign of how tightly the club is woven into this deep-sea port town on the state's far south-west coast.
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Service area: Portland, VIC
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