What a Yacht Berth Actually Costs

The berth is a market, not a line item

Broker decks talk about dockage the way they talk about insurance: a percentage, a shrug, a number you will find out later from the marina. That is backwards. A berth is a scarce good with a posted tariff, and the tariff is almost always per foot of length per month. Once you have those two numbers, the annual wet-berth bill is a multiplication, not a negotiation.

Luxemetry prices that multiplication directly. Length times the model's premium-marina rate times the months you actually occupy — default twelve. Same function as the yacht cost-of-ownership calculator and every model page. The 10% rule article treats dockage as one of five running-cost lines. This article is the line on its own, because where the boat sits when you are not on it is a different decision from how hard you run it.

On an Axopar 37 Sun Top the arithmetic is 37 feet times $30 per foot per month times twelve: $13,320 a year. That is 20% of the $66,395 first-year running cost, and the largest cash line after fuel. On a Sanlorenzo SD96 it is 96 feet times $58 times twelve: $66,816 — 5% of the $1,369,166 running cost, behind a $658,750 refit reserve and $403,000 of crew. Same formula. Completely different weight.

The rate itself steps with length and location. Owner-operated dayboats in this dataset sit at $30 to $45 per foot per month. Production flybridges at $34 to $50. Superyachts at $58 to $72. The Oceanco 90-metre is $110. The Lürssen 100-metre is $120. Those last two are not marina specials. They are what a premium berth that can physically take the hull is modeled to cost, in a market where the physical taking is the rare part.

Dockage is length times rate times months. Crew is a step. Fuel is a choice. The berth is a hole you either have or you do not.

Twelve months wet, priced down the dock

Every annual figure below is twelve months at the model's premium rate. That is the Florida / Mediterranean in-water default — the boat stays wet, you keep using it, and you do not pay a yard to haul, block, and shrinkwrap. Seasonal climates are the next section. These are the year-round numbers the calculator prints on every yacht page.

Owner-operated boats are where dockage is a real share of the year. A Boston Whaler 380 Outrage is 38 feet at $32: $14,592. A Riva Aquariva Super is only 33 feet but $45 a foot, because a mahogany runabout does not sit in a cheap marina: $17,820. A Prestige 460 is 46 feet at $32: $17,664. A Galeon 500 Fly is 52 feet at $34: $21,216. A Fairline Squadron 58 — the size where the dataset puts the first full-time crew on the books — is 58 feet at $36: $25,056, which is still smaller than that crew's $71,500.

Once crew exists, dockage drops down the ranking even as the cheque grows. An Absolute Navetta 64 is $26,112. A Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 is $31,752 — and fuel on that hull, at 260 gallons an hour and 250 hours, is $357,500, more than eleven times the berth. A Ferretti 720 is $34,560. A Princess Y85 is $48,960. A Sunreef 80 Eco is $49,920 on length alone; a sailing catamaran of that LOA is often billed on beam as well, so the real Mediterranean invoice can print higher than the model. The model is honest about charging length.

Above 90 feet the dollars become serious and the percentage becomes small. A Wally WHY200 is $63,360. The Sanlorenzo is $66,816. A Benetti Oasis 40M, 131 feet at $72, is $113,184. A Feadship 50-metre is $173,184. An Amels 60 is $200,940. The Oceanco is $389,400. The Lürssen 100-metre is $472,320. On the Oceanco that berth is 2.4% of the $16.0 million first-year running cost. You will notice the berth. You will not budget the year around it.

• Axopar 37 Sun Top · 37 ft. $30 per foot per month. Twelve-month wet berth $13,320 — 20% of first-year running cost.

• Riva Aquariva Super · 33 ft. $45 per foot. $17,820 a year. Short, expensive, and not a cheap-marina boat.

• Fairline Squadron 58 · 58 ft. $36 per foot. $25,056 a year. Still behind the first crew member.

• Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 · 63 ft. $42 per foot. $31,752 a year. Fuel is $357,500. The berth is not the story.

• Sunreef 80 Eco · 80 ft catamaran. $52 per foot of length. $49,920 a year. Beam-based marina tariffs can exceed this.

• Sanlorenzo SD96 · 96 ft. $58 per foot. $66,816 a year — 5% of the $1.37 million running cost.

• Benetti Oasis 40M · 131 ft. $72 per foot. $113,184 a year. Crew is $772,200.

• Oceanco 90m Custom · 295 ft. $110 per foot. $389,400 a year. The constraint is finding the berth, not paying it.

Winter storage is the months lever

The calculator's other dockage input is months, not rate. Default twelve. Halve it and you are describing a seasonal climate: six months in the water, six months on the hard. On the Axopar that takes $6,660 off the year. On the Sanlorenzo it takes $33,408 off. On the Oceanco it takes $194,700 off, which is a number that looks like savings until you ask where a 90-metre hull spends the other six months.

For owner-operated boats in the Northeast, the Great Lakes, and the Baltic, winter storage is the normal year. Haul, block, shrinkwrap, systems winterized, spring splash. That yard invoice lives in the model's maintenance and refit reserve, not in dockage — 4% of declining hull value on the Axopar, which is $13,600 in year one on a $340,000 retained value. The $13,320 wet-berth line and the $13,600 reserve are two different cheques for two different seasons. Paying both for twelve months of in-water use is the Florida mistake applied to New England.

A 60-foot flybridge can still live that split. A 96-foot semi-displacement yacht mostly cannot. Hauling a Sanlorenzo for the winter is a shipyard period, not a boatyard winter. The boat stays wet, or it is in refit. The months lever is real on the Axopar, the Whaler, the Prestige, the Galeon, and the Fairline. It is a paper saving on the Benetti. Anyone pricing a 40-metre as if she will sit on the hard from November to April is using the wrong climate.

Mediterranean practice sits in between. Many 60-to-90-foot boats stay in the water year-round at a winter rate a few euros per foot below the August tariff, or they take a short hard-standing for antifoul and survey. The model does not try to price that discount. It prices twelve months at the premium rate, which is the planning number — the one that still works if the winter rate never materialises and the marina does not have a shoulder season.

• Twelve months wet (model default). Florida, the Caribbean, and a Mediterranean boat you actually use in winter. Axopar $13,320. Sanlorenzo $66,816. Oceanco $389,400.

• Six months wet, six on the hard. Northeast and Baltic owner-ops. Axopar dockage drops to $6,660; the haul-out sits inside the $13,600 year-one reserve, not in dockage.

• Shipyard winter (90 feet and up). Not storage. A refit window. Cutting dockage months on a 40-metre does not put her in a shed; it puts her in a yard invoice.

When the constraint is a hole in the water

Per-foot tariffs assume the berth exists. Above about 80 feet that assumption starts to fail, and at 90 and 100 metres it is the whole problem. A Lürssen 100-metre needs a 328-foot hole with beam, draft, power, and security to match. Antibes, Monaco, Palma, Fort Lauderdale, and a handful of other harbours have some. Most places you would like to take the boat do not. The ownership note on that page is the planning rule: confirm the berth before you confirm the build.

Catamarans fail the same test from the other direction. A Sunreef 80 Eco is 80 feet long and much wider than a monohull of the same length. Marinas that bill by LOA will take $49,920 at the model's $52 rate. Marinas that bill by area, or that apply a catamaran multiplier, will not. The model charges length because that is the published tariff unit on most premium docks. It is also a known underestimate for a beamy sailing cat in August in the western Med.

Availability is why dockage rarely dominates a large yacht's running cost and still decides where she lives. On the Tecnomar, fuel is 49% of first-year running cost and dockage is 4%. On the Sanlorenzo, refit is 48% and dockage is 5%. On the Oceanco, the $10.0 million refit reserve and the $2.96 million payroll leave $389,400 of dockage looking like a rounding error. The rounding error is also the reason the boat is in this harbour rather than that one.

If you are going to own, price the berth as a market: length, rate, months, and whether a hole of that size exists in the water you actually want. Then let the yacht cost-of-ownership calculator add crew, insurance, refit, and fuel on top. The 10% rule will not tell you any of that. Neither will a marina brochure that quotes a summer week and stays silent on the annual contract.