Marina service
Little Ship Club
About
Little Ship Club at a glance
Little Ship Club appears to be a local boating club on North Stradbroke Island (Dunwich / One Mile) in Moreton Bay, Queensland. Source references mention the club and pages that suggest pontoon or mooring facilities, indicating the club supports visiting or berthed vessels in the Dunwich area.
Service area: Dunwich (One Mile), North Stradbroke Island
- Marina type
- yacht club marina
- Operator
- Little Ship Club
- Region
- Moreton Bay
- Water body
- Moreton Bay
- Berth types
- permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- licensed club
- 60m main pontoon
- 40m side pontoon
- 5 swing moorings
- visitor overnight berthing $40-100
- licensed bistro & bar
- showers & toilets
- gaming
- ATM
- free wifi
- functions & weddings
- game fish tournament
Useful for sailors looking for
- Wet berthing and moorings
About Little Ship Club
The Little Ship Club occupies one of the more unusual marina sites in Queensland: the waterfront at One Mile, Dunwich, on the western side of North Stradbroke Island, Minjerribah, looking across Moreton Bay to the mainland. Founded in October 1951 by boating enthusiasts with roots in the wartime Naval Auxiliary Patrol and the RANVR, the club has grown from a post-war sailing fraternity into a licensed clubhouse with two marina jetties and a small group of swing moorings, all facing the sheltered One Mile anchorage. Its history is recorded in the club book Blue Sky White Star, published in 1986, and the club marked its 65th anniversary in 2016. The atmosphere is deliberately casual. Members and visitors arrive by private boat, by water taxi or vehicle ferry from Cleveland, or by the island bus, and the lawn in front of the clubhouse fills with families, dogs and barefoot sailors on weekends. The calendar mixes power cruising weekends and fun races with a monthly fishing competition and the Little Ship Game Fish Club tournament each February, which draws anglers from interstate and overseas. Unlike the big mainland marinas, there is no commercial marina operation here; the pontoons exist so that people with boats can tie up, walk up the lawn and have lunch. That combination, a genuine boaters' club with absolute water frontage on an island twenty kilometres from Brisbane, gives the Little Ship Club a character no mainland facility can replicate. The clubhouse's waterfront bistro, known to regulars for its seafood and sunset outlook, doubles as the social centre of the One Mile foreshore, and the club's open-door policy to visiting yachties has made it a standard fixture on Moreton Bay cruising itineraries.
Marina facilities
Berthing centres on a 60-metre main pontoon, a 40-metre side pontoon and five swing moorings in One Mile. Full members berth and moor without charge; visitors can book the pontoons overnight at published rates of $65 a night for vessels under 10 metres, $90 for 10 to 15 metres and $100 over 15 metres on the main pontoon, and $40 a night for vessels up to 6 metres on the side pontoon, with bookings capped at two nights. Day visitors coming ashore for lunch, served from 10am to 2.30pm, tie up free but must be off the pontoon by mid-afternoon. Bookings require a credit card, a copy of vessel insurance and a photograph of the test-and-tag on shore power leads, and a $50 cancellation fee applies if a booking is not cancelled by lunchtime on the day. A fob access card, $40 for members and $50 deposit for visitors, gives 24-hour entry to the clubhouse amenities, which include showers and toilets. The clubhouse itself operates as a licensed venue with a bistro trading on local seafood, a bar, gaming room, ATM and free wifi, and it hosts weddings, functions and live music. There is no fuel wharf, slipway, travel lift or pump-out; the club reserves the right to clear the pontoons in bad weather and can book them out for club events, so skippers should confirm on (07) 3409 9022 before crossing the bay. Jet skis are accommodated but confined to the rock-wall side of the main pontoon or the side pontoon with a single tie point, and small dinghies are asked to do the same so larger vessels can use the face. Swing moorings remain a members-only privilege, with no visitor access at any price.
Local sailing knowledge
One Mile sits just north of the Dunwich township, inside the lee of North Stradbroke Island, and the anchorage has been a favourite Moreton Bay overnight stop for generations of Brisbane cruising boats. The approach across the bay from Manly or Cleveland is straightforward in settled weather, but the western bay shallows and the channels around the island demand attention to the chart, particularly at low tide when the banks off Dunwich dry. Water taxis and vehicle ferries run from Cleveland to Dunwich throughout the day, so crew changes are easy, and the township behind the club has a small supermarket, bakery, bottle shop and fuel for provisioning. Ashore, Minjerribah rewards a longer stay: Brown Lake for a freshwater swim, Point Lookout's North Gorge walk for turtles, dolphins and winter humpbacks, and the surf beaches on the eastern side. Dunwich itself carries a layered history, from its 1827 convict outstation through its years as a quarantine station and benevolent asylum, and the cemetery above the town is worth the walk. Club lore holds that the February game fish tournament has weighed some serious billfish over the years, and the bar conversation runs reliably to bay tides and where the whiting are biting. Summer northerlies can make the roadstead choppy, but the anchorage is comfortable in the prevailing south-easters. Skippers planning a weekend should book the pontoon early, because space goes quickly once the bay forecast turns kind, and members can reserve a month ahead. The club phone doubles as the de facto marine office, and bar staff will pass messages to vessels on the pontoons.