Berth and Marina Costs

The Berth Is the First Number to Fix

Berthing is the largest fixed line in most yacht operating budgets and the only large line that is fully knowable in advance. Fuel depends on how far the vessel moves. Maintenance depends on what the yard finds. A berth depends on a published tariff and a hull length.

That makes berthing the correct place to start any cost of owning a yacht exercise. The previous part of this series showed that the purchase price is the smallest number in ownership, and that berthing and fuel supplied roughly eighty-seven per cent of the spread in a published sample budget.

Fixing the berth first collapses most of that uncertainty. A buyer who has read the tariff for the marina the vessel will actually sit in has removed the single largest unknown from the annual stack, before making an offer on a hull.

How a Marina Actually Prices a Berth

Marinas price berths on length overall, in bands, with surcharges layered on top. Marina di Ragusa in Sicily runs seventeen length bands from six metres to fifty, each carrying a daily, monthly, annual and winter rate.1

Length overall is measured generously. MDL's standard berthing agreement defines boat length to include davits, bowsprits, boarding ladders, stern drives, tenders, outdrives, rudders, anchors, pulpits and pushpits, and reserves the right to measure the vessel and recharge if the declared figure is short.6

Position inside the same marina then moves the price again. Marina di Ragusa surcharges the Molo di Ponente by five per cent, the Molo di Levante by twenty-five per cent for vessels under twenty metres, and the O and N pontoons by twenty-five per cent, where annual contracts are not offered at all.1

What Four Published Tariffs Say

Four marinas with published 2026 tariffs price a fifteen-metre, an eighteen-metre and a twenty-four-metre hull as follows. Marina di Ragusa and Marina di Brindisi quote an annual contract directly. Premier Marinas quotes a rate per metre per year. Monaco quotes only by the month, so the figure below is twelve consecutive months at its published passage tariff.

The Sicilian and the Monegasque figures are for the same hull length in the same sea, twelve months apart on the calendar and roughly four times apart in price.

One Hull Length, a Four-Fold Spread

The spread across those four tariffs is the practical finding. A fifteen-metre yacht costs €6,150 a year at Marina di Ragusa and €24,092 at Port Hercule, a difference of €17,942 on an identical vessel.14

Expressed against a hypothetical €900,000 fifteen-metre yacht, the Sicilian berth is 0.7 per cent of hull value a year and the Monegasque berth is 2.7 per cent. Neither number is a property of the boat. Both are properties of the postcode.

The gap widens with length. At twenty-four metres the same two tariffs read €13,700 and €52,534, a difference of €38,834 a year, which is more than the entire annual berthing bill for three fifteen-metre yachts in Sicily.14

Anyone quoting yacht running costs as a single percentage of purchase price is averaging across that spread and reporting the average as though it were a fact about the vessel.

Monaco Publishes No Annual Rate

Monaco is the most-cited berth in yachting and the least documented. The Société d'Exploitation des Ports de Monaco publishes exactly three categories of tariff on its rates page: short-term passage rates for Port Hercule and Fontvieille, wintering rates for both, and a rate sheet for Cala del Forte.5

There is no published annual berth tariff for Port Hercule. The €24,092 figure in the table above is not a Monaco annual contract price. It is twelve consecutive months at the published monthly passage rate, which is the only construction available from a public document.

That distinction matters, because a long-term Monegasque berth is not sold on the passage tariff and the real figure is not in the public domain. Where no primary figure exists, this series states the absence rather than filling it with an estimate.

Beam Is Priced Separately From Length

Multihulls are surcharged by every one of the four tariffs, which is the clearest signal in the data that marinas price water surface rather than hull length. Marina di Ragusa adds fifty per cent for catamarans.1 Marina di Brindisi adds fifty per cent from October to May and seventy-five per cent from June to September.2

Port Hercule adds sixty per cent for a multihull.4 Premier Marinas charges wide-beamed boats one and a half times the published rate for their length overall.3

Four operators in three countries, pricing independently, converge on a surcharge band of fifty to seventy-five per cent. A catamaran buyer comparing a fifteen-metre cat against a fifteen-metre monohull on berthing cost alone should therefore read the monohull tariff and add at least half again before comparing anything else.

The Annual Contract Does Not Refund Pro Rata

An annual berthing agreement is a commitment rather than a subscription, and the exit arithmetic is published. MDL's standard berthing agreement carries a worked example: an annual fee of £4,870 for a ten-metre boat, payable either in full or as twelve direct debit instalments of £418.6

An owner leaving after three months does not receive nine twelfths back. The occupied period is recalculated at the marina's published monthly rate, which the agreement states explicitly is not the pro rata value of the annual fee. In MDL's own example three months costs £1,797.6

That is thirty-seven per cent of the annual fee for twenty-five per cent of the year. Marina di Ragusa is blunter still: annual contract fees paid are non-refundable, and winter contracts refund seventy per cent only if cancelled by the stated April date.1

What the Berth Fee Excludes

The berth fee buys the water and very little else. Marina di Ragusa meters electricity at €0.32 per kilowatt hour and water at €3.75 per cubic metre, both outside the berthing contract.1 Port Solent meters electricity at 32.75 pence per unit and charges £5 for a replacement access fob.3

Marina di Ragusa also states that any contract between marina and client is understood on a vuoto per pieno basis, meaning the berth is charged whether or not the vessel occupies it.

Two further exclusions are worth pricing before signing. Marina di Ragusa charges extra days beyond contract expiry at the transit rate, which at fifteen metres is €68 a day against an annual contract working out at about €17.1 Premier Marinas applies a fifty per cent premium to emergency and same-day boatyard bookings.3

Where This Analysis Is Weakest

The four tariffs above are real, current and public, and they are still a narrow sample. Two limitations are worth stating.

The first is availability. A published annual rate is not an available berth. Marinas at the premium end of the Riviera operate waiting lists, and a tariff that cannot be transacted is a price for a berth nobody can buy this season.

The second is the top of the range. Because Monaco publishes no annual grid, and Antibes, Porto Cervo and Saint-Tropez are not represented here by a document this analysis could read, the genuine upper bound on Mediterranean berthing is unsourced. The €52,534 figure at twenty-four metres is a passage-rate construction, not a contract price.

The next part of this series prices yacht insurance, the second-largest fixed line, where the published spread is wider still.