IT'S official: the wrecking balls are set to destroy the Cairns Yacht Club building on Trinity Inlet.

The drawn out battle to save the 90-year-old clubhouse, dance hall and bar ended yesterday when Cairns Ports served notice that the building must be removed within 120 days.

An upset club administrator Barbara Dymott, who will lose her job when the building goes, said the decision marked the end of an era.

"I am sad. It really is an icon," she said.

"We have been sailing out of this location for 100 years.

"I am finished when the club goes."

The historic building's demise has been on a knife edge since a memorandum of understanding between the Cairns Yacht Club and Cairns Ports, which owns the land, was signed requiring the club to move to a new aquatic centre in Marlin Marina.

It is understood Cairns Ports is then expected to sell the site to a developer that will build a multi-storey apartment complex on it.

Moves to get the yacht club heritage listed to save it and a petition signed by 5000 people fell on deaf ears of the land's ultimate owner, the State Government.

Club members and visiting yachtsmen having a beer on the deck of the building described the decision to destroy it as a "tragedy" and a "disgrace".

"It is a financial thing. They do not care about the people, the kids and the history," one member who declined to be named said. "I do not think anybody is happy. It is part of Cairns' history."

Regular visiting yachtsman and member of the Royal Victorian Yacht Club Graeme Watson said the State Government should "be burned in boiling oil".

"It is just another nail in the coffin of visiting yachtsmen," he said.

But not everybody is dismayed by the move.

Club commodore David Kelly said it marked a new era where the club could get back to basics and concentrate on sailing rather than be an entertainment venue.

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