How to Choose a Superyacht Refit Shipyard

You have a vessel due for a five-year survey, a paint job that has failed, and a wish-list of upgrades your captain has been quietly collecting for a season. You call three yards; each quotes on a different basis, each promises the same dry-dock window, and none will commit to a firm number. Choose wrong and the yacht sits in a shed past her charter season while the invoices climb — the refit market's oldest and most expensive trap.

Start with the hard constraint: will she physically fit?

Before track record, before price, before anything else, establish whether the yard can actually take your yacht. A refit yard is only a candidate if its dry-dock or lift, and its covered shed, accommodate the vessel's length, beam, draught and air draught with working clearance to spare. A 60-metre motoryacht needs a dock rated well beyond her tonnage, a shed tall enough to clear masts and cranes, and a travel-lift or syncrolift capacity that is not borderline. Borderline is where accidents and delays live.

Covered space matters more than owners expect. Paintwork, the single most schedule-critical task in most refits, demands a controlled, dust-free, climate-managed shed; an open-air quay will not deliver a fair topcoat and will lose weeks to weather. Confirm the shed is available for your entire window, not just the start. Ask for the dock's exact dimensions and rated capacity in writing, and have your surveyor or project manager verify them against the yacht's particulars. A yard that cannot comfortably fit the vessel should be struck from the list regardless of how attractive its rates look.

Track record, location and labour rates: the qualifying trio

Once fit is established, three factors qualify a yard: what it has done before, where it sits relative to your cruising plan, and what its labour actually costs. None can be judged in isolation.

• Track record on vessels like yours: a yard fluent in 40-metre sailing yachts may be the wrong choice for a 70-metre displacement motoryacht. Ask for references from owners of comparable vessels and comparable scopes, and call them.
• Location versus cruising programme: a Mediterranean-based yacht refitted in Florida burns delivery time, fuel and crew cost getting there and back, and arrives out of position for the season. Weigh transit against any rate saving.
• Labour rates and the real cost base: headline hourly rates vary widely between hubs, but the meaningful figure is the all-in cost of the finished job, which folds in productivity, rework and local overheads.

Northern-European yards often carry higher rates but strong project discipline; Mediterranean hubs offer proximity for Med-based fleets; US yards suit Americas-based programmes. The right answer is the yard where competence, position and cost intersect for your specific vessel and itinerary — not simply the cheapest quote.

The major refit hubs, compared

A handful of centres handle the bulk of large-yacht refit work, each with a distinct profile. The table gives indicative positioning — figures are illustrative ranges for orientation, not quotes, and any real budget must come from a surveyed specification.

Rates are only a starting reference. Two yards quoting the same hourly figure can differ by a third on the finished job once productivity, rework and management overhead are counted. Read the profile alongside the fit, the track record and, above all, your own cruising position.

Fixed-price versus cost-plus: how the contract shapes the risk

The contract structure determines who carries the risk of the unknown, and refits are full of unknowns — you cannot fully price a repaint until the old paint is stripped, or a steel survey until plating is opened up. Two models dominate, and the honest yards explain the trade-off plainly.

• Fixed-price (lump-sum): the yard commits to a defined scope for a firm figure. It transfers overrun risk to the yard, which prices a contingency into the number. It works only where the scope can be tightly specified in advance; anything discovered outside that scope becomes a variation order.
• Cost-plus (time and materials): you pay actual labour and materials plus an agreed margin. It suits open-ended or investigative work where scope genuinely cannot be fixed, but it places the overrun risk squarely on the owner and demands rigorous oversight.

Most large refits run as a hybrid: a fixed price for well-defined packages such as paint and known machinery work, cost-plus for survey-driven discovery, and a clearly governed variation-order process bridging the two. The structure you accept should match how well the scope is actually known — not the model the yard finds most comfortable.

The owner's representative and the discipline that prevents overruns

The single most reliable predictor of a refit finishing on time and near budget is not the yard; it is the quality of the owner's-side project management. A dedicated owner's representative or refit project manager — independent of the yard — writes the specification, runs the tender, polices the scope and signs off the work. Without one, the owner negotiates variation orders from a position of ignorance while the yacht sits in the shed.

Scope creep is the mechanism by which refits overrun, and it is rarely dramatic: a captain's good idea here, a discovered corrosion there, an upgraded specification agreed in a corridor. Each seems minor; together they can add a third to the bill and weeks to the schedule. The disciplines that contain it are a fully documented specification agreed before work starts, a formal written variation-order process with priced sign-off for every change, and a realistic contingency — commonly 10–20 per cent of the contract value — held and governed openly rather than quietly consumed. Strong yards welcome this rigour; it protects them as much as the owner. A yard that resists a clear specification and a formal change process is telling you how the project will go.

Warranty, snagging and the handover you must not rush

A refit is not finished when the yacht floats out; it is finished when the snag list is closed and the warranty terms are settled. Owners eager to make a charter or a cruising window routinely accept a vessel with open items, then discover that leverage evaporates the moment she leaves the yard. Hold the handover to a proper standard.

Insist on a documented sea trial and a joint snagging inspection before final acceptance, with defects listed, categorised and scheduled for rectification. Retain a meaningful portion of the contract value — a retention held until the snag list is cleared — so the yard has a commercial reason to return and finish. Establish the warranty period and precisely what it covers: labour, materials, subcontracted work and, critically, paint, which carries its own separate guarantee and its own conditions. A clear warranty, a retention against snagging and an unhurried, documented handover are what separate a refit that is genuinely complete from one that merely looks it on float-out day.