Marina service
Sunset Harbour Marina (Carlo Point)
About
Sunset Harbour Marina (Carlo Point) at a glance
Sunset Harbour Marina (Carlo Point) is a marina located at Carlo Point in Rainbow Beach, QLD. The listing indicates marina facilities and shoreside vessel support for recreational boats.
Service area: Rainbow Beach, QLD
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Region
- Cooloola Coast
- Water body
- Tin Can Inlet, Great Sandy Strait
- Wet berths
- 8
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- pump-out
- power & water
- restaurant/cafe
- licensed restaurant (50 indoor + 30 deck seats)
- Skipper's Bar
- kiosk & cafe
- charter office
- deep-sea fishing charters
- dolphin ferry cruises
- hire boats & 12-seat tour boat
- charter/yacht/houseboat hire approvals
- public boat ramp nearby (Carlo Rd)
Useful for sailors looking for
- Wet berthing and moorings
About Sunset Harbour Marina (Carlo Point)
Sunset Harbour Marina occupies the point at the end of Carlo Road, a few minutes south of Rainbow Beach township on the Cooloola Coast, where Tin Can Inlet widens into the southern Great Sandy Strait. Marine charts know the spot as Sunset Harbour, and the name is literal: the waterfront faces west across the inlet toward the mangrove shore, making it one of the very few east coast marinas where the sun sets over the water. It is a tiny operation by marina standards, just eight deep-water berths, but it carries a full hospitality complex on top: a licensed restaurant with indoor and deck seating, Skipper's Bar, a kiosk and cafe, and an upstairs charter office with panoramic views over the strait. The complex was fully renovated in recent years, its restaurant having traded variously as a bar-bistro, a Thai kitchen and an a la carte seafood room, and it has been offered for sale as a going concern on a lease running to 2041, marketed on the strength of its multiple income streams: berthing, dining, deep-sea fishing charters and the long-running dolphin ferry cruises. Across the water rises the flank of K'gari, the world's largest sand island, and the marina functions as the island's nearest mainland jumping-off point on this stretch of coast. Its scale keeps the atmosphere personal; the charter skippers, the barman and the berth holders all tend to know one another. Grey nomads towing vans, 4WD fishers bound for Inskip's beach camping and cruising yachts working the strait all wash up at the same deck tables.
Marina facilities
The marina proper is compact but properly equipped. Each of the eight deep-water berths carries power, water and a sewerage pump-out connection, and berthing is offered on casual and permanent terms, though with only eight pens availability is perpetually tight, which suits the mix of local fishing boats, visiting cruisers and charter vessels that use the pontoon. The complex holds full statutory approvals for charter, yacht and houseboat hire, and its commercial tenants run the on-water program: deep-sea fishing charters work the Wide Bay bar and the reefs off Double Island Point, the dolphin ferry cruises cross the strait, and Rainbow Beach Hire Boats operates from the marina with a 12-seat custom tour boat and a hire fleet, licensed boats from about $295 a day including 25 litres of fuel with a bond payable. A public boat ramp sits nearby on Carlo Road for trailer boats. The hospitality side is the surprise for a site this size: a renovated restaurant seating 50 inside and another 30 on the deck under shade sails, a fully equipped commercial kitchen, the licensed Skipper's Bar with refrigerated beer and wine storage, and a separate kiosk and cafe handling takeaway coffee, snacks and ice creams. The second-level charter office, with its view over the inlet, is available for separate lease. There is no fuel wharf, slipway or chandlery on site, so boats fuel and provision in Rainbow Beach or Tin Can Bay, and major hull work means a run to the yards at Tin Can Bay or further south to Mooloolaba.
Local sailing knowledge
The Great Sandy Strait, the long, shallow channel between the mainland and K'gari, is beautiful and unforgiving in equal measure. Navigation is by marks and tide tables: broad sandbanks dry at low water, channels migrate, and first-timers are wise to take advice from the marina's charter skippers before heading north toward Tin Can Bay or south into the strait's winding middle reaches. The reward is sheltered cruising in almost any weather, with anchorages off Fraser's western beach, dugong and turtles on the banks, and fishing for whiting, flathead, tailor and mud crabs that has drawn families here for generations. The marina's immediate neighbours tell the local story: Inskip Point, a few kilometres north, is where the vehicle barges leave for K'gari's surf side, and Tin Can Bay, a short run up the inlet, is famous for its morning wild dolphin feeding. Rainbow Beach township, about ten kilometres up the road, supplies fuel, groceries, bait and a pub, and its coloured sand cliffs and the lighthouse at Double Island Point fill days off the water. Carlo Point itself carries a small residential community and the road-end boat ramp, and the point's blowhole-like rocks see a succession of sunset photographers most evenings. Skippers working the Wide Bay bar to reach offshore fishing grounds treat it with respect, crossing on the top of the tide in settled weather only. For trailer-boat families, hire-boat tourists and the cruising boats that poke in from the strait, the complex functions as the Cooloola Coast's all-in-one waterfront stop.