A club for all seasons

By ROBIN BAILEY

Clearwater Cove Yacht Club is different. Operating out of the Westpark Marina on the upper harbour, it has a busy racing programme, 60 enthusiastic members and club facilities that include an upmarket restaurant and bar.

All this is available for an annual sub of just $90. Compare that with the $500-plus yearly tab for ordinary membership of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, and it's bargain-basement stuff.

Clearwater Cove secretary-treasurer Sean Bainbridge concedes the top-of-the-harbour club doesn't have that Squadron cachet, but says it does offer an affordable alternative.

"By eliminating those hugely expensive clubhouse overheads like buying and maintaining buildings, running bars and restaurants, supervising stocktakes, staffing and so on, we can concentrate on sailing," says the enthusiastic Young 88 sailor.

"We have an arrangement with the commercial brasserie at the marina that gives us a clubhouse with an excellent restaurant that is open seven days a week," he explains.

"It is big enough to cater for major sit-down functions for up to 200, and flexible enough to be partitioned off for smaller occasions, club meetings and so on."

There is a downside: "We pay bar and restaurant prices, but then again we get full commercial quality and service. Our members believe it's worth it, not having to shoulder the potential liability that comes with running restaurants and bars."

Brasserie owner Brent Ivil, who over the years has played a variety of innovative roles around the Auckland waterfront, believes the liaison with the club works well for both parties.

It enabled him to develop and subsequently extend the facility. And plans to build more houses and apartments adjoining the marina mean an increased membership pool for the yacht club and a bigger client base for the restaurant.

Like all yacht clubs, the racing is important for Clearwater Cove members. It runs a winter Sunday series on both local (west of the bridge) courses and harbour races, and a Wednesday series in summer; it has also organised one successful transtasman event.

There are 585 berths at Westpark, which is one of the few Auckland-area marinas to provide for live-aboards.

There are about 50 of these tied up at any one time and some of the visiting sailors take the opportunity to secure their boats and go racing with Clearwater regulars.

Among the keenest members is former commodore and well-known designer-builder John Lidgard, who has won the Canterbury Cup series for the past two years in Nimble, a 10m of his own design. Lidgard is also the club's handicapper.

Commodore Rhys Hanna, with a 10-year circumnavigation of the world in his logbook, sails Caernarvon II, another Lidgard design.

Other club members have made similar circumnavigations, though mostly in considerably less than a decade.

High-profile members include Team New Zealand's America's Cup guru Tom Schnackenberg and solo sailor Chris Sayer.

Like his yacht's designer and the rest of the club's executive, Hanna is confident about the future. A Water Wise sail-training programme is about to begin to cater for junior would-be Dean Barkers from local schools.

Clearwater Cove has an initial fleet of nine training yachts, a mix of Optimists and Firebugs.

The first stage is getting a team of qualified instructors in place, drawn both from club members and keen parents.

Saturday, September 14 will be Open Day at Clearwater Cove. Members will be on deck to show off the facilities, explain the racing schedule and introduce families with interested youngsters to the training programme.

Lidgard says they will turn on some father-and-son, father-and-daughter sailing if the weather is right.

For more information about the club or its open day, call Sean Bainbridge on (09) 416 5120 or check the Nautilus Marine website.