Albany Waterfront Marina

About the marina

Albany's marina sits at the foot of the main street on Princess Royal Harbour, the product of a thirty-year civic push to reconnect Western Australia's first European settlement with its working waterfront. The $42 million LandCorp redevelopment opened in July 2011, handing the new marina to the Department of Transport while the City of Albany took over the public open spaces; the precinct also absorbed the $70 million Albany Entertainment Centre, the ANZAC Peace Park and a nine-metre-high pedestrian bridge over the port rail line. Stage one delivered about 74 floating pens within rock breakwaters, with dredged depths to around 2.8 metres and plans on the books for roughly 130 pens in total as demand builds. The tenancy mix is deliberately broad: recreational cruisers and trailer boats share the basin with commercial operators, including the whale-watching and charter fleets that work King George Sound, and the service wharf is engineered to take vessels of 50 tonnes displacement. Because the harbour floor is a shallow natural basin averaging barely three metres, the marina's breakwaters and dredged pocket create the only genuinely protected all-tide berthing close to town, which is why pen occupancy has stayed high since opening. The setting does some quiet storytelling of its own, with the port's grain terminal on one side, the brig Amity replica and old whaling town streetscape up the hill, and the Ataturk Entrance shipping channel running past the breakwater into King George Sound. Visiting yacht crews crossing the south coast often rate it the most convenient berth between Fremantle and Adelaide precisely because everything, from fuel to a supermarket, sits within a ten-minute walk.

Berthing & shoreside services

The Department of Transport and Major Infrastructure manages pen allocation and the harbour facilities, reachable on 08 9216 8520. Published pen fees list floating pens with walkway and floating alongside berths from $758 and fixed alongside berths from $606.40 for terms of three months or more, with casual and permanent arrangements both offered. About 75 floating pens take recreational and commercial vessels, and staged expansion capacity exists for further pens. The land-backed concrete service wharf is the operational heart of the marina: it carries single and three-phase power, vehicle access for loading, sullage pump-out and a high-flow diesel facility operated by Fuel Distributors of Western Australia on 1300 693 392. Engineering ratings are published for commercial users, with berth loads to 50 tonnes displacement berthing at 0.3 metres per second, stack loads of 1500 kilograms per square metre, T44 vehicle loading and mobile cranes to 20 tonnes safe working load. A two-lane concrete ramp with a floating universal-access jetty, derigging bays and trailer parking handles trailer traffic, and a floating visitor jetty takes short-term berthing for passenger transfer. Larger vessels can lie at the fixed timber jetty, which has single and three-phase power and water but sits outside the gated secure area. Public accessible toilets serve day users, while penholders have their own toilet, shower and laundry block. An accessible fishing platform projects into the basin, and expired flares are accepted at the DTMI office at 178 Stirling Terrace. Security includes gated pen access and lighting, and fuel, power and pump-out make the service wharf a genuine one-stop working berth for charter and fishing vessels.

Local context in YouSail

This is directory context, not navigation advice. Check current charts, notices and official boating resources before passage.

Entry is through the Ataturk Entrance, the dredged shipping channel between Point King and Possession Point that links King George Sound to Princess Royal Harbour; it runs about 200 metres wide and is maintained around 13 metres deep for port shipping, so small craft should keep to the side and stay clear of grain ships, woodchip carriers and the cruise vessels that berth inside. The channel was renamed in 1985 under a reciprocal arrangement in which Turkey named the Anzac landing place Anzac Cove, and the memorial and Point King lighthouse ruins overlook the pass. Tidal range in the harbour is modest, around 0.7 to 1 metre, but currents through the entrance can reach half a metre per second on springs, and the harbour beyond the dredged pocket shallows quickly, with broad intertidal margins off Shoal Bay and the western shore that demand chart discipline. Once outside, King George Sound is one of the south coast's great cruising grounds, with Michaelmas and Breaksea islands, sheltered anchorages behind the Vancouver Peninsula and humpback and southern right whales in season from about June. Albany's provisioning is a short walk up York Street, and marine trades cluster around the port precinct. The town wears its maritime history openly: George Vancouver's 1791 appraisal of the sound as the finest harbour in the southern hemisphere is quoted on every second plaque, the 1914 Anzac convoys assembled here, and whale chasers worked from the harbour until 1978. Winter brings hard westerlies that make the marina's breakwaters earn their keep, while summer sea breezes give reliable afternoon sailing inside the sound.