Manly State Boat Harbour is the largest recreational harbour on the bay, home to the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, East Coast Marina, the Wynnum Manly Yacht Club and the Moreton Bay Trailer Boat Club, and it has two public ramps, one at each end. The northern one on Fairlead Crescent is the bigger: four concrete lanes at an eight per cent grade with a floating walkway on the ramp, a public pontoon off the William Gunn jetty nearby, a tap, and a secure car park of about 112 bays with overnight parking allowed. The state register lists it as usable on all tides, and the harbour is dredged deep.
It is well protected inside the breakwaters and it fills early: on a fine weekend the car park is full by seven and the queue at the ramp is the morning's first test. Six knots applies throughout the harbour, and the channel out through the entrance carries every yacht, ferry and trailer boat in Manly. Once outside, Green Island is a few kilometres east, with St Helena and Peel islands beyond and the Rous Channel to Moreton Island.
Marine Rescue Queensland Brisbane (formerly Coast Guard Brisbane) is based beside the ramp and monitors VHF 16 and 73. The southern ramp has three lanes and toilets.
A note on these photographs
The photographs above are from Wikimedia Commons and are used under their Creative Commons licences; each caption gives the year, because the facility may have changed since.
- Public boat ramp, Manly, Queensland, 2020 - Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Manly Boat Harbour, Queensland, 2020, 13, 2020 - Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0
