Maintenance and Yard Costs

The Yard Bill Is a Tariff, Not an Estimate

Maintenance is the line most owners treat as unknowable and most boatyards publish in full. Premier Marinas' schedule of retail boatyard charges for Port Solent, effective from 1 September 2026, prices lifting, washing, blocking, launching, movement ashore, slings, storage and pressure washing by the metre.1

That schedule is the base case for everything below. It covers vessels up to sixty tonnes with a minimum charge at 6.5 metres, and quotes anything over eighteen metres on application.1

This is part four of a series building the cost of owning a yacht from published documents. Part two priced the berth and part three priced insurance. The yard bill differs from both because it is the only large line where the owner's own decisions about timing move the price by half.

What a Haul-Out and Relaunch Actually Costs

A routine yard visit is three charges rather than one: coming out, sitting on the hard, and going back in. The table applies the published Port Solent rates to a fifteen-metre and an eighteen-metre monohull, with four weeks ashore and the spring peak premium applied.

Coming out and going back in alone costs £1,308.75 at fifteen metres, before the vessel has been touched.

The Per-Metre Rate Rises Faster Than the Metres

Yard pricing is not linear in length, and the non-linearity is published rather than hidden. Premier Marinas charges £51.25 per metre to lift, wash and block off a vessel in the 12.1 to 15 metre band, and £63.00 per metre in the 15.1 to 18 metre band.1

Three extra metres therefore buy twenty per cent more length and a 22.9 per cent higher rate on every metre. The lift bill rises from £768.75 to £1,134.00, which is 47.5 per cent, not twenty.

The launch line behaves the same way, moving from £36.00 to £47.25 per metre across the same boundary, a 31.3 per cent step.1 Above eighteen metres the tariff stops quoting at all and reads price on application, which is the point at which a prospective owner can no longer budget the line from a public document.

The Storage Clock Is Where the Money Goes

Storage ashore carries the sharpest step in the whole Port Solent schedule. The rate is £12.20 per metre per week for a 12.1 metre or longer vessel up to eight weeks, and £21.30 per metre per week from eight to twenty-five weeks.1

That is a 74.6 per cent increase at week nine. Premier's annual berth holders also receive up to eight weeks of storage ashore as an included benefit, so the same boundary marks the transition from free to £21.30 per metre per week.1

On a fifteen-metre yacht, week nine costs £319.50 where week eight cost nothing. A yard job that slips a fortnight past the eight-week mark adds £639 in storage alone, with no work done. Overrun risk in a yard period is not a schedule problem. It is priced into the tariff.

Antifouling Is Arithmetic Before It Is Labour

Antifouling volume can be calculated exactly from a manufacturer datasheet, which makes it one of the few maintenance materials with no estimate in it. International's technical datasheet for Micron 350 gives practical coverage by brush or roller of 9 square metres per litre per coat, against a theoretical 10.2

The same datasheet specifies two coats at 60 microns dry film thickness for one season, or three coats for two seasons.2 A one-season scheme therefore consumes one litre for every 4.5 square metres of wetted surface, and a two-season scheme one litre for every 3 square metres.

Spray application is materially less efficient on paint, at 4 square metres per litre per coat practical.2 Preparation is specified too: a high pressure fresh water wash at 3,000 psi, or 207 bar, with wet sanding only. Dry sanding an antifouling is prohibited outright.

Six Surcharges Sit On Top of the Base Rate

The Port Solent schedule carries six distinct multipliers, and an unlucky yard visit can trigger four of them at once. A spring peak premium of ten per cent applies from 1 January to 31 March, and a ten per cent saving applies from 1 October to 31 December.1

Emergency and same-day bookings carry a fifty per cent premium. Bookings or changes made with less than five working days' notice attract a £95 short notice fee. Heavily fouled boats pay 1.5 times the £11.50 per metre pressure washing rate.1

Wide-beamed boats pay 1.5 times the published rate for their length overall, the same multiplier the marina applies to berthing.1 Staff assistance runs at £55 per half hour per person and holding a vessel in slings at £190 per hour, both of which accrue while a fault is being diagnosed rather than fixed.

Where Maintenance Sits Against Purchase Value

Fraser Yachts publishes the clearest named benchmark for maintenance as a share of value. Its ownership cost guidance, updated 23 April 2026, states that yacht maintenance alone typically accounts for 5 to 10 per cent of purchase value annually, "and that is before unscheduled repairs enter the picture".3

On a €900,000 fifteen-metre yacht that band is €45,000 to €90,000 a year, which is an order of magnitude above the £2,245 four-week yard visit priced earlier in this article. The difference is labour, parts, systems servicing and certification rather than lifting.

Fraser lists what the band has to absorb: engine service intervals, antifouling, hull inspections, safety equipment certification, and HVAC, navigation, generator and stabiliser systems.3 The published yard tariff prices access to the vessel. It does not price the work done once access has been bought.

The Yard Period That Cannot Be Deferred

Some yard work cannot be done afloat, which removes the owner's discretion over when it happens. Fraser states that most superyachts require a dry dock period every few years for hull repaints, running gear inspections and deeper mechanical access.3

A major refit, which Fraser places at every five to seven years, is described as one of the largest single expenditures in the ownership lifecycle, covering hull and structural work, machinery overhauls, interior renovation and technology upgrades.3

The budgeting implication is the same one part one of this series drew about the emergency reserve: an owner without a refit provision has not avoided the cost, only deferred it into a year where it arrives alongside a survey deadline. Fraser's own recommendation is to build refit reserves into the annual budget from the outset rather than confronting them when surveys demand it.

Where This Analysis Is Weakest

Three limitations qualify everything above. The first is geography. Port Solent is an English south coast yard, and Mediterranean yard rates are not represented here by a document this analysis could read. The structure of the tariff, not the currency, is what transfers.

The second is scale. The schedule caps at sixty tonnes and stops quoting above eighteen metres, so the two largest sizes in this series cannot be priced from it at all.

The third is labour. Every figure above is for lifting, storage and materials. Yard labour rates are quoted per job rather than per metre and are absent from the published schedule, which is why Fraser's 5 to 10 per cent band and a boatyard tariff differ by an order of magnitude without contradicting each other.

HelmShare publishes this analysis because the same operating stack sits underneath a charter fund. Returns from any such structure are targeted rather than promised, and capital is at risk.