About Us

Within a short period of time Portobello Sailing & Kayaking Club has grown into a club of more than 120 members offering sailing, kayaking and rowing from our base on the Promenade.

We were founded in April 2008 after the City Council agreed to lease the club a piece of ground which was to form our dinghy park. The land until then had been part grass and part impenetrable bushes which the council cleared away for us, leaving decades of detritus which an army of volunteers helped bag up and dispose of.

We formally established ourselves as a Club Limited by Guarantee with the usual constitution and memoranda, and began the process of raising money from both local supporters as well as Awards for All and the Scottish Communities Fund, both of whom awarded us £5000 each; enough to buy and install the perimeter fence, necessary to secure the land.

From this point on we could start to offer a base where members could store boats for which we are able to charge a fee, helping us to raise further money for a shed, a rescue boat, a quad bike, dinghies, kayaks, a new web site and so on.

We quickly formed a relationship with the RYA and their ‘Sailing in the City’ travelling sailing school and in the last 24 months have taken over 200 children and adults through various RYA dinghy sailing courses. We have now started to run some of these courses ourselves with various club members now trained up as Assistant Instructors.

We have acquired two toppers and an Enterprise but hope soon to have more boats for our members to use.

On Sundays we offer the opportunity for those without boats to sail with one of our members, safe in the knowledge that our rescue boat will be ever-present.

Parallel to this we started to offer kayaking courses for kids, young and not-so-young adults and these have been enormously successful. We run these at the Musselburgh Lagoons – clear safe warm water where students can be taught in controlled conditions. We are lucky to have a 5 Star Instructor (hens teeth) who delivers all our courses for us. Feedback is always excellent. We have also just bought four kayaks for the club which any member with a Two Star qualification can use.

The third dimension is ‘RowPorty’ – a group of some thirty enthusiasts who have come together to build and race the new 18 foot rowing skiffs that have been re-established on the Forth. The 5 person crafts – four rowers and 1 Cox are based on the original rowing skiffs which were extremely popular in the early part of the last century. These latest versions are lighter and more affordable to build and there are now at least half a dozen being raced in the forth and further afield. A second skiff has now been added, bullt by volunteers over several months.