The real cost of owning a yacht

For a 15 metre sailing yacht in the Mediterranean, a realistic annual running cost is roughly EUR 25,000 to EUR 60,000 before depreciation, and where the boat is berthed moves that figure more than anything else on the list.

The range is wide because the inputs genuinely are. The same hull costs EUR 5,931 a year to berth in Spain and EUR 35,301 a year in Mallorca on those marinas' own 2025 and 2026 tariffs, a difference of nearly EUR 30,000 for precisely the same boat doing precisely the same thing. Anyone quoting a single percentage of purchase price is not answering the question.

The most repeated figure in yacht ownership is that running costs come to 10 to 15 percent of purchase price a year. We could not trace that rule to BoatUS, Yachting Monthly, Practical Boat Owner or any surveying body. Every instance leads back to a broker's marketing blog. Treat it as an industry rule of thumb with no traceable origin.

What can be sourced is narrower and more useful. Boat Trader advises budgeting about 10 percent of a boat's value annually for regular maintenance alone, so roughly USD 5,000 on a USD 50,000 boat, plus an emergency reserve of 10 to 20 percent of value. Its own published worked budget for that same USD 50,000 boat totals USD 8,449 to USD 27,800 a year excluding contingency. That is 17 to 56 percent of purchase price, which contradicts the folk rule using the folk rule's own source.

These are annual and daily rates for a 15 metre vessel, taken from each marina's own published tariff. Value added tax treatment differs by marina and is noted in each case.

The Antibes problem

One structural detail is almost never written down. At Port Vauban in Antibes, the flagship marina of the Côte d'Azur, ordinary annual contracts are capped at 12.99 metres length overall. Anything from 13 metres up must instead take a Guarantee of Use Contract running up to 21 years in exchange for a capital contribution to port works, a system that replaced berth leases on 1 January 2022. In practice a 45 to 55 foot boat cannot simply rent a berth there for the year.

The Caribbean

Jolly Harbour in Antigua publishes per-foot rates: USD 1.45 per foot per day for a monohull in winter, from 1 November to 31 May, falling to USD 1.00 per foot per day on the quarterly rate, with summer at USD 1.25 and USD 0.80. A 50 foot monohull on the winter quarterly rate is therefore about USD 4,500 a quarter before taxes and metered utilities, with electricity at USD 0.85 per kilowatt hour and alongside berths charged at double stern-to. Most of the region is less forthcoming. Nanny Cay in the British Virgin Islands publishes no dockage rates at all, and neither IGY Simpson Bay nor Isle de Sol in St Martin publishes a rate card.

Broker guidance, not underwriting data, and it should be read as such. Sun Coast General Insurance puts annual premiums at 1 to 5 percent of insured hull value with a typical owner around 1.5 percent, giving USD 3,750 on a USD 250,000 hull, USD 7,500 on USD 500,000 and USD 15,000 on USD 1,000,000. Boat Trader corroborates a narrower 1 to 2 percent.

Three details matter more than the headline rate. Named-storm zones such as Florida and the Gulf run 3 to 5 percent of hull value rather than the 1.5 percent average, which makes geography the single biggest factor in the premium. Two deductibles usually apply, a standard 1 to 2 percent of insured value plus a named-storm deductible of 5 to 10 percent. And, counter-intuitively, larger yachts pay a lower percentage of value than smaller ones, not a higher one.

Yard costs are the ones owners consistently underestimate, because they are quoted per metre or per square metre per day and only become visible when multiplied out.

South Dock deliberately escalates its hard standing charge with time, from GBP 1.70 per metre per day for the first 30 days to GBP 2.10, then GBP 2.50, then GBP 3.10 beyond 120 days, and says openly that yard costs increase the longer the boat stays in the yard. A stalled refit is not a fixed cost. It compounds.

BoatUS Magazine, using pricing sourced primarily from J.D. Power, describes an S-curve: a 10 to 15 percent decline in year one, around 20 percent lost by year five, 30 to 50 percent by year ten, then re-acceleration through the teens and twenties before bottoming out at 10 to 30 percent of original value.

Two findings from the same source deserve more attention than they get. The late-life re-acceleration is partly insurance-driven, because carriers restrict coverage at the 20, 25 and 30 year marks, which thins the buyer pool at precisely those ages. And size slows depreciation: a 20 foot boat is likely to depreciate faster than a 50 foot one. The real ten year figures behind the curve vary enormously by builder, from 11 percent on a Boston Whaler 170 Montauk to 47 percent on a Key West 170CC, on 2016 new against 2026 average retail and not adjusted for inflation.

Set against the running costs above, depreciation on a EUR 600,000 yacht in its first five years is comfortably larger than every berthing, insurance and yard invoice combined. It is also the cost owners never write down, because no one sends an invoice for it.

A 15 metre sailing yacht is normally owner-operated, so crew is a cost you can avoid. It is worth knowing what it looks like once you cannot. Aggregated 2026 to 2027 benchmarks for 30 to 40 metre vessels put a captain at USD 7,000 to 11,000 a month, a chief engineer at USD 7,000 to 15,000 and a head chef at USD 7,000 to 13,000. Those are aggregated secondary figures rather than payroll data. Dockwalk's commentary is that crew wages are broadly flat year on year, since supply has recovered since the shortage of 2021 and 2022 and, in its words, crew are demanding higher pay this year but not necessarily receiving it.

Boats Group's 2025 Market Index, published on 5 March 2026, reports global boat sales finishing 2025 nine percent below 2024 by unit, with total value sold falling from USD 10.42 billion to USD 9.97 billion. Pricing held firm in many categories despite the lower volumes, but time to sell did not: new boats in North America averaged 279 days on market, up 50 days year on year, and the average North American boat sold for USD 169,997, up around 5 percent.

A longer time to sell is a real cost. Every one of those 279 days carries a berth fee, an insurance premium and a maintenance obligation.

Everything above is the cost of holding an asset that produces no cash. Charter can offset part of it, and our page on yacht charter investment returns walks through exactly how much and where it leaks away. If the objective was exposure to charter income rather than access to a vessel, the ownership costs on this page are not a hurdle to be optimised. They are the reason for using a different structure.

HelmShare Prime Fund, L.P. is a Cayman Islands Exempted Limited Partnership that owns and charters a fleet, and distributes income to limited partners who never berth, crew, insure or lay up anything. The Fund targets an 8 percent preferred return, paid quarterly and subject to available funds, over a six year term. Targeted, not guaranteed, and your capital is at risk.