Marina service
Magnetic Island Marina (Maggie Island Marina)
About
Magnetic Island Marina (Maggie Island Marina) at a glance
Magnetic Island Marina (also referred to as Maggie Island Marina) is a marina located at Nelly Bay on Magnetic Island, in the Townsville region of Queensland. The facility appears to provide marina shoreside facilities and vessel berthing services at Nelly Bay on Magnetic Island.
Service area: Nelly Bay, Magnetic Island, QLD
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Magnetic Island Marina (Motor Finance Direct Pty Ltd)
- Region
- Townsville
- Water body
- Nelly Bay Harbour
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- power & water
- showers & laundry
- restaurant/cafe
- three-phase power on request
- metered power billing
- berth licence agreements
- VHF harbour entry protocol
- adjacent ferry and barge terminal
Useful for sailors looking for
- Dry storage or hardstand
About Magnetic Island Marina (Maggie Island Marina)
Magnetic Island Marina, branded locally as Maggie Island Marina, occupies Nelly Bay Harbour on the southern side of Magnetic Island, about 8km or 20 minutes by ferry from Townsville. The marina was built as part of the Nelly Bay Harbour redevelopment of the early 2000s, which placed a breakwater-sheltered basin, the Blue on Blue resort apartments and the island's ferry and car-barge terminal side by side at 123 Sooning Street. It is the only marina on the island and, with 105 berths, one of the more substantial in the Townsville region. Ownership arrangements are layered: the State of Queensland holds the head lease, the body corporate of the adjoining complex leases the marina, and management rights sit with the marina operator, which sells berthing by licence agreement rather than lease or freehold. A number of individual berths were also sold to Blue on Blue apartment owners on 25-year leases running to 2032. The clientele is a mix of island residents, Townsville boat owners who prefer island water to city berthing, and cruising yachts working the Queensland coast, many of whom regard the basin as one of the safest cyclone-season refuges in the north. Liveaboard is not permitted under the head lease, which keeps the fleet a genuine boating community rather than a floating suburb, and the whole precinct runs on island time, twenty minutes and a world away from the mainland. Granite headlands rise straight from the water around the harbour, so arriving yachts get the full island panorama on the final approach past the breakwater.
Marina facilities
Every berth is supplied with 15-amp 240-volt single-phase power and a 20mm water connection, with metered power usage charged on top of berth fees, and three-phase power can be arranged as an additional service at cost for larger vessels. Berthing is offered on daily, weekly and monthly terms paid in advance including GST, formalised through a mooring agreement that grants a licence to use a numbered berth rather than any property right; occupancy during Magnetic Island Race Week, held in late August and early September, requires vessels to vacate for the event, with no berth fee charged for that period. Amenities include showers and laundry facilities, and the Nelly Bay Harbour precinct alongside provides a waterfront restaurant, day spa, cafes, an IGA supermarket and the ferry terminal within a few minutes' walk, so provisioning requires no vehicle at all. There is no fuel wharf, travel lift, hardstand or pump-out at the marina; fuel, haul-out and shipyard services are across the bay at Townsville's Breakwater Marina and the Ross Creek yards, a consideration skippers should build into their planning. The marina office is contactable on (07) 4758 2417 or mobile 0432 419 799, monitors VHF channels 16 and 22 and works on channel 15 under the call sign Maggie Island Marina. Harbour entry protocol set by the Townsville Harbour Master requires all vessels to announce themselves on channel 16 when entering or departing Nelly Bay Harbour, and the Sealink ferries and the Fantasea car barge have right of way in the entrance channel at all times.
Local sailing knowledge
Nelly Bay Harbour's entrance is dredged but shallow by marina standards, with a published mean low-tide minimum of 2.5 metres LAT, so deeper-keeled yachts should plan movements around the tide and treat the figure as a floor rather than a guarantee, siltation being a known harbour characteristic. Inside the breakwater the basin is genuinely sheltered; local skippers rate it among the most secure cyclone-season water in North Queensland, which explains the wait for permanent berths in summer. The island itself is the cruising reward: 23 recognised bays and beaches, most backed by national park, with anchorages at Horseshoe Bay on the north side, Picnic Bay and Florence Bay, and fringing reef snorkelling straight off the beach at Geoffrey Bay, where rock wallabies come down to the shore at dusk. Around half the island is national park, with walking tracks over granite headlands between bays, and wild koalas are a routine sighting. Provisioning is honest rather than fancy: the IGA and bottle shop at Nelly Bay, cafes at Picnic Bay and Horseshoe Bay, and anything bigger a ferry ride away, with the passenger ferry running to Townsville roughly hourly through the day and the car barge carrying vehicles. Gulf currents set westward past the island, afternoon sea breezes are reliable in the dry season, and the run to the Palm Island group or the reef pontoons off Townsville makes Maggie a useful staging berth for North Queensland passages. Magnetic Island Race Week, run out of Townsville each year in late winter, is the harbour's busiest fortnight, when berth holders vacate and the basin fills with racing yachts.