The Margate beach ramp, 2012. Ché Lydia Xyang, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Margate is the beach suburb between Redcliffe and Woody Point on the eastern, ocean-facing side of the peninsula, and its ramp runs off the Esplanade onto the beach. A single concrete lane at a ten per cent grade with toilets and a tap and about six bays. The state register lists it as usable on all tides, as the beach shelves steadily, but this is an open beach ramp, and a north-easterly or a south-easterly sea makes launching and retrieving a wet, difficult business. It is a tinnie ramp for calm mornings.

What it offers is the eastern bay direct: the Redcliffe foreshore, the artificial reefs and the runs to Moreton Island and the Rous Channel without threading a harbour. Six knots applies along the beaches near swimmers. Flathead and whiting off the beach, snapper on the reefs in winter.

Scarborough Boat Harbour's two ramps are the all-tide sheltered launches on the peninsula; Woody Point's three-lane ramp is close by. Marine Rescue Queensland Redcliffe monitors VHF 16.

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.

Further reading