Kelowna Boating, Water Sports, Fishing, Wineries, Lake Maps

Situated on beautiful Okanagan Lake, Kelowna, British Columbia is the perfect setting for a great boating experience. Carved out by glaciers during the ice age, this pristine mountain lake winds its way 80 miles or 130 kilometres up the scenic Okanagan Valley in the Southern Interior of BC. Kelowna is centrally located on the eastern shore, halfway up the lake.

Kelowna is a four-season playground with mild spring and fall months. Summers are hot with lots of sunny dry days, great for all sorts of outdoor activities with the lake literally at your doorstep. The summer is a fantastic time to enjoy boating in this cosmopolitan midsized city. The cold winters make for great snow skiing and other outdoor activities.

For over half a century, Kelowna has been known as a summer holiday getaway, with its fabulous boating, world class golf courses, wineries, orchards, hiking, biking, skiing - ideal for just about anything you might want to do in the great outdoors.

There are four waterfront hotels with restaurants/pubs that are easily boat-accessible with four fueling docks also located in and around the Kelowna area. At the north end of the lake there are two gas docks, one up the north west arm and one near Paddle Wheel park on the north east shoreline.

Watersports

People have participated in water sports around the Kelowna area since 1906, the year after the City was incorporated. Regatta, typically centered around the beach at City Park, attracted contestants from up and down the Okanagan Valley and from as far away as Vancouver, to partake in swimming, diving and boat-racing events – popular water sports still enjoyed on the lake to this day. Today, you can also see many other, and newer, water sports including Wakeboarding, Wakesurfing, Windsurfing, Kiteboarding, Parasailing, Hydrofoiling, Kneeboarding and the popular family sport of Tubing.

The Early Days & Kelowna Regatta

Kelowna Regatta began as a great way to enjoy the lake, and grew over time with events including water skiing competitions and demonstrations, dragon boat and hydroplane racing and sailing regattas, all held directly in front of Hot Sands Beach at City park. Overhead were live air shows, which eventually included military jet demonstrations by Canada's Snowbirds. A carnival in City Park featured fabulous fireworks, and nightly spectacles around the pool and high dive platform. Sad to say, the main event grandstands burnt to the ground in 1969 and were never replaced.

Unlimited Hydroplanes have been racing off Hot Sands Beach and the downtown area for decades. If you’ve never seen this thrilling spectacle, you’re missing out on something amazing!

Watersports Now

Around Kelowna today you'll find many different water sports to enjoy on beautiful Okanagan Lake. In this section of the website we have information and videos about water skiing, wakeboarding and wakesurfing.

Sailing

The sport of sailing has been around the Kelowna area since the turn of the century and has grown throughout the years to involve many types of sailing vessels. Today there are keel boats and catamarans, trimarans, Hobie Cats, dinghies, windsurfers and kiteboarders.

Until recently, sailors at the north and south ends of Okanagan Lake were segregated by Kelowna’s old floating bridge, which permitted passage under its lift span at set times of the day, which changed depending on time of year. The new William R. Bennett floating bridge opened in the summer of 2008. Its elevated span allows fixed mast sailboats to pass under the bridge at any time of the day and year.

With the new bridge, look for increased participation in the weekly sailing regattas at the Kelowna waterfront on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings. It is quite a sight to see all the colourful spinnakers flying on a downwind leg, off the shores of Kelowna’s downtown waterfront.

The floating bridge creates a large breakwater which produces highly variable wind conditions, depending on wind direction and on which side of the bridge you choose to sail. When the breeze blows from the north, the bridge blocks the wind, creating a lull on the lea side. With a southerly breeze, a similar lull occurs on the bridge’s north side.

Owing to the bend in the lake, winds can be very gusty and/or inconsistent to the south of the bridge along the western shore. When the winds blow out of the south and round the point at Kalamoir Beach and Casa Loma, gusts appear as dark patches, surrounded by calm patches, along the lake’s surface. These gusty conditions can make sailing very tricky, so be prepared to trim a lot!

Better sailing conditions prevail on the opposite shoreline, southeast of the bridge, where more consistent breezes typically blow from the north in the 5 to 8 knot range. Windsurfers and kite boarders prefer the strong south westerlies in 12 to 18 knots of breeze.

Central Okanagan Small Boat Association(C.O.S.A.) is located along the southeastern shoreline. It houses mostly dinghies and small catamarans and offers terrific programs for sailing enthusiasts beginners to advanced. Their website (www.cosa.bc.ca) posts weather and wind reports for the southern Kelowna area.

The Kelowna Yacht Club (KYC), Westbank Yacht Club, Summerland Yacht Club, Penticton Yacht Club, and Vernon Yacht Club, all hold regattas throughout the sailing season. Check with your local club for information regarding their sailing races and regattas.

The Kelowna Yacht Club has offered boating education programs since its establishment in 1945, and has established mooring buoys up and down Okanagan Lake for its members and the local boating community to share. Their website (www.kelownayachtclub.com) provides excellent weather reporting for Kelowna’s northern end.

Check back soon for for new sailing updates, photos and videos.