Mounts Bay Sailing Club

Mounts Bay Sailing Club is a dinghy-focused club on the Swan River at Crawley, on the western edge of Perth. Founded in 1897, it is one of the oldest sailing clubs in Western Australia, and it stays deliberately accessible: an active learn-to-sail centre with a broad off-the-beach fleet, best known in recent years for hosting the 2019 International Moth World Championships. If you want to place it on the water, read our companion guide to sailing in Perth and Fremantle.

The club

MBSC is a volunteer-run, family-oriented club rather than a large keelboat institution. It reports around 350 members with a roughly even split of women and men, and its identity is built around inclusion and affordability. Despite a prestigious waterfront address at Matilda Bay, the club has kept its entry point low, and it presents itself as a place for everyday Western Australians to learn to sail and race small boats.

The fleet reflects that. Regular Sunday racing runs across a wide spread of off-the-beach classes: Optimists and Mudlarks for the youngest sailors, Flying Ants and O'pen Skiffs, the two-handed 420, and performance singles and doubles such as the Tasar, GP14, International Moth, Sharpie and windsurfers. The club maintains a separate jetty complex — expanded over the years to around 60 pens — for cruisers and powerboats, which supports a Friday-night twilight series, but the racing heart of the club is on the dinghy line.

As an accredited Discover Sailing Centre, MBSC runs structured learn-to-sail programs for both juniors and adults, along with learn-to-windsurf courses and school-holiday sessions. That pathway — from a first lesson to a Sunday-fleet start line — is central to how the club describes itself.

History

The club was established in 1897, when the flat water and reliable afternoon sea breeze of the Swan River drew Perth locals into organised racing. In the early years the boats were often working craft pushed hard by their skippers after hours, and the club quickly developed a social side alongside the sport.

Competitive ambition came early too: MBSC sailors travelled to their first interstate championship on Sydney Harbour in 1905, and the club records a win in an early Australian championship in 1907. A dedicated clubhouse did not arrive until 1939. That original building has a notable wartime chapter — during the Second World War it was used by the United States Navy as part of the Catalina flying-boat base at Matilda Bay. The present clubhouse was built through the late 1950s and early 1960s, largely with volunteer labour from members and the local community.

Over its history the club has hosted a substantial tally of national and world-level regattas across its dinghy classes. The most prominent recent example is the 2019 International Moth World Championships, sailed on its home waters. We have summarised the milestones the club publishes rather than attempting a complete record; where exact figures matter, the club's own history pages are the authoritative source.

Where it sails

The club's water is the Swan River at Matilda Bay, part of the broad basin known as Perth Water, immediately below the western suburbs and within sight of the city. This is protected, largely flat water — the classic Perth combination of a sheltered river course and a strong, predictable sea breeze building through summer afternoons.

That setting shapes the club's fleet. The Swan River is forgiving enough for a first-timer in an Optimist yet breezy enough to reward high-performance boats like the Moth, which is one reason the venue suited a Moth world championship. For a fuller picture of the local conditions, tides and how the Fremantle Doctor fills in across the metropolitan waterways, see our guide to sailing in Perth and Fremantle. If any of the sailing terms here are unfamiliar, our sailing terms glossary explains the essentials.

Racing

Club racing is a Sunday programme running through the WA sailing season, typically from around October to April, across the off-the-beach classes listed above. The cruiser and powerboat division adds a Friday-evening twilight series. Because the club is dinghy-focused, its calendar is oriented around small-boat fleet racing and development rather than offshore or long-distance keelboat events.

MBSC sits within a cluster of Perth-metropolitan clubs on and around the Swan River and Melville Water. Nearby, Nedlands Yacht Club and Royal Perth Yacht Club round out the local scene — the former another off-the-beach and dinghy club, the latter Western Australia's best-known keelboat institution. Together they give the area an unusually deep range of options, from a child's first Optimist lesson to grand-prix keelboat racing.

For membership details, the current season calendar, race documents and learn-to-sail bookings, the club's own website is the best source; check there for the latest information before turning up to sail.