Why Your 5-Metre Boat Keeps Getting Quoted for a 12-Metre Berth

A boat owner came to us last month wanting an annual berth for a Shetland 535. Five and a half metres of boat, drawing half a metre. We sent his enquiry to twelve marinas in Devon. Every single one was a yacht marina built for boats of twelve to thirty metres. The smallest of them takes 11.89m.

That was our mistake, and it is worth explaining, because the same thing happens to small-boat owners who never come near us.

Why marinas quote small boats badly

Two things work against you, and neither is anyone being awkward.

An annual berth is priced by length, with a minimum charge. Below a certain size the minimum takes over, so a 5.4m boat pays close to what a 9m boat pays. You get the worst value in the marina — you are buying a berth built for something much larger and paying most of what its proper occupant would.

One owner of a 535 put it plainly when we asked about this:

The marinas kept asking if I was sure. I had to lease a space capable of taking a much bigger boat and the cost went up accordingly.

He paid it, because what he actually wanted was the security of a locked, staffed marina where he could leave the boat fully kitted out. That is a perfectly good reason. But he was choosing between a bad-value berth and no berth, when there was a third option nobody offered him.

And you probably do not need the water. A boat drawing half a metre does not need a deep-water pontoon that stays afloat at every state of tide. That depth is expensive to dredge and maintain, and you are paying for it whether you use it or not.

What to ask for instead

When we went back and asked experienced owners what they would have done, the answers were remarkably consistent — and none of them was "a yacht marina".

Harbour commissions and municipal harbours. Places like Dartmouth or Looe are run to serve a working harbour rather than to return a profit on pontoon metres. Their moorings are often a fraction of marina rates, and their small-boat provision is real rather than an afterthought.

Sailing clubs and fishing clubs. A club mooring usually costs a fraction of a marina berth, and for a boat of this size the club is often where everyone like you already keeps theirs. Joining may cost less than one month of the marina berth you were quoted.

Swinging moorings and half-tide moorings. If your boat can take the ground, or draws little enough not to care, a half-tide mooring opens up water a deeper boat cannot use.

There is a practical constraint on swinging moorings worth knowing before you ring round. As one owner explained it:

Swinging moorings have to have similar weights of boat, or else they bump together at each low tide.

So a mooring field will not simply take whatever turns up. They are grouping boats by weight and swing radius, and a very light boat in a field of heavy ones is a problem for everyone. Ask what else is on the trot.

How to ask so you get a straight answer

Whatever you approach, lead with the numbers rather than the question. Length overall, beam, draught, and what the boat is. A harbourmaster can tell you in one line whether they can take you, and most will tell you where to try if they cannot.

It is also worth asking one question that people rarely do: is there a minimum charge, and what does it apply to? If the answer is "we charge a minimum of 8 metres", you have learned in ten seconds that this is the wrong place for a 5.4m boat, and you have not wasted a week finding out.

What we changed

We had built our matching on the wrong half of the problem. We checked whether a marina could take a boat that was too big — maximum length, maximum beam, maximum draught — and never checked whether the boat was too small for what they let.

That is now fixed, so far as our data allows. Marinas can also tell us directly when a boat is below what they take, and that answer goes straight back to the owner along with the suggestion to try a harbour, a club or a swinging mooring instead.

We would rather tell you that than send you to twelve marinas that will each quote you for a berth twice the size of your boat.

If you have a small boat and want to know what is actually available near you, [tell us the boat once](/get-quotes) and we will ask the places that fit it.