Marina service
St Helens Marina
About
St Helens Marina at a glance
St Helens Marina is a marina located in St Helens on Tasmania's East Coast. The business name indicates it provides marina facilities and berthing for recreational vessels and shoreside vessel support in the St Helens area.
Service area: St Helens, East Coast Tasmania, TAS
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- St Helens Marina
- Region
- East Coast Tasmania
- Water body
- Georges Bay
- Wet berths
- 20
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- power & water
- slipway nearby
- marine rescue escort
Useful for sailors looking for
- Wet berthing and moorings
- Haul-out and slipping
About St Helens Marina
St Helens Marina is the recreational counterpoint to the town's commercial jetties: a small private marina of around 20 floating berths sitting just north of the working wharves on the western shore of Georges Bay. It occupies what long-time cruising hands describe as the most sheltered pocket of the bay, in the lee near Beauty Bay, where the fishing fleet's wash and the sea breeze off the Tasman barely reach the pontoons. The scale is deliberately modest. Where the MAST piers a few hundred metres south handle 70-tonne working vessels under a daily service charge, the marina caters to yachts and motor cruisers wanting finger-berth convenience and a short walk into town. St Helens itself is the hub of the Break O'Day municipality and the northernmost port on Tasmania's east coast, a town built on fishing and bolstered by game-fishing tourism each summer when the tuna run offshore, so the marina's clientele mixes local boat owners with cruising yachts pausing between Bass Strait and the Freycinet coast. Little is published about the facility itself; it has no clubhouse, chandlery or boatyard of its own, and its character comes from its setting rather than its infrastructure. What it offers is a pontoon berth in calm water within five minutes' walk of the main street, in a port that has welcomed small craft since the nineteenth century. The local volunteer marine rescue group, based beside the MAST office nearby, regularly tows disabled vessels into Beauty Bay and rafts them at the marina, which says something about both the water outside and the shelter within.
Marina facilities
Published detail on the marina's services is thin, and what follows reflects verifiable cruising-guide reporting rather than operator marketing. The marina comprises roughly 20 floating berths with power and water available, arranged for both permanent local boats and casual visitors. A limited number of free berths have historically been kept available, and casual charges reported in the early 2010s ran at $40 per day or $120 per week, figures that should be confirmed directly before arrival as they are dated. There are no dedicated amenities buildings attached to the marina itself: berth holders rely on the town's public toilets and showers a short walk away near the commercial jetties, and on St Helens' shops for everything else. That reliance is less inconvenient than it sounds, because the marina sits closer to the centre of town than almost any comparable Tasmanian facility; two IGA supermarkets, a pharmacy, hardware and the Saturday market in the library car park are all within a few hundred metres. Marine services in the port support the marina from outside: a slipway operates in the St Helens harbour area for haul-outs, diesel is available at St Helens Wharf through Georges Bay Diesel (0408 130 226), and a marine dealer near the esplanade handles parts and tackle. The MAST office and St Helens Marine Rescue share a building close by on the waterfront, which is the first point of contact for berthing advice in the port generally. For waste, laundry and wifi there are no marina-specific provisions, so cruising boats typically treat a stay here as a berth-plus-town arrangement rather than a full-service stop.
Local sailing knowledge
The marina's greatest asset is also the reason some skippers never see it: Georges Bay is guarded by the St Helens bar, a shifting sand entrance that breaks badly in easterly and north-easterly swell and has been recorded as troublesome since sealers sounded it in the 1820s. The standing advice is unchanged. Contact St Helens Marine Rescue on VHF 16 before attempting entry, cross in the last hours of a rising tide, and take up the volunteers' offer of an escort if it is your first time; they run escorts through the barway and the shallow Pelican Point reach of the inner channel as a routine service, funded by donations. Approaching from the south, give St Helens Island, St Helens Rocks and Merrick Rock, about a mile east of St Helens Point, proper offing. Inside, the channel threads past the commercial jetties to the marina in the bay's most sheltered corner, and depth around Pelican Point argues for a high, rising tide in anything with real draft. Ashore, St Helens is the most complete service town on the east coast north of Triabunna: supermarkets, cafes, a wine bar with weekend music, and daily coaches to Launceston. The bay itself is renowned for fishing, and trailer boats use the double-lane town and Stieglitz ramps year-round. For onward cruising, the Bay of Fires anchorages at Skeleton Bay and Seaton Cove lie north for westerly weather, and the sand anchorage behind St Helens Island, about six nautical miles south, makes a comfortable first hop toward Bicheno and Freycinet once a favourable window for the bar appears.