How to Choose a Refit Yard: A 2026 Guide for Yacht Owners

Learning how to choose a refit yard is the single decision that shapes everything else about your project. Pick the right yard and a major refit runs close to budget, finishes near the date on the contract, and hands you back a better boat than the one you drove in. Pick the wrong one and you get change orders that never stop, a crew living in a hotel for an extra two months, and a warranty argument that ends with lawyers. This guide walks captains and owners through the whole selection process for 2026: how to read a yard's real capacity, check its track record on boats like yours, compare quotes that look nothing alike, understand who actually does the work, weigh location against cost, and spot the red flags before you sign.

A refit is not a haul-out. A haul-out is a scheduled pause for antifoul, anodes, and a survey. A refit is a build project with a moving target: paint, systems, interior, structure, sometimes a lengthening or a re-engine, often all of it at once with dozens of trades sharing the same hull for months. The yard you choose is really the general contractor for that project, and the questions you ask before you commit matter far more than the day rate on the first page of the quote.

Start with the scope, not the yard

Owners get this backwards all the time. They fall for a yard, book a slot, and then try to fit the work into it. Do the opposite. Write down what the refit actually involves before you talk to anyone, because the scope tells you which yards can even do the job. A cosmetic freshen-up (varnish, soft furnishings, a paint touch-up, new electronics) can go almost anywhere. A full repaint, a teak deck replacement, tank work, a stabiliser retrofit, or steel repair needs a yard with the shed, the lifting gear, the certifications, and the trades to match.

Break your scope into three buckets. First, the must-do items driven by class or flag: a five-year survey, a bottom job, tank inspections, anything the surveyor flagged. Second, the reliability items you have been putting off: worn stabiliser seals, a tired genset, corrosion around the swim platform. Third, the wish list: a new tender garage layout, a beach club refresh, upgraded audio-visual. Rank them, price them roughly, and decide which are firm and which are optional. When you hand a yard a clear scope, you get a clear quote back. When you hand a yard a vague idea, you get a vague number that balloons later, and that is the origin of most refit horror stories.

Assessing yard capacity: the physical questions

Before anything else, confirm the yard can physically handle your boat. This sounds obvious, and yet owners regularly discover in month two that the shed is a metre too short for scaffolding, or the travelift cannot take the beam. Capacity is not one number. It is a stack of them, and each one can stop your project cold.

Lifting capacity and travelift tonnage

The travelift or ship hoist has to lift your displacement, not your length. A 45 metre motor yacht can weigh anywhere from 250 to 500 tonnes depending on build. Match your loaded displacement against the yard's rated lift with real margin, because rated capacity assumes an even, ideal load and your boat is neither. For reference, STP Shipyard Palma runs a 1,000 tonne travelift, one of the largest in the Med, and lifts over 2,000 boats a year. Safe Harbor Rybovich in Florida operates a 150 tonne and a 660 tonne travelift plus a 3,000 tonne floating dry dock, with a 1,100 tonne travelift and a 2,500 tonne floating dock coming online at its Riviera Beach expansion. Big yards have options. Ask which specific machine will lift your boat, what it is rated to, and when it was last load-tested.

Shed size and covered space

For any paint job, you need a shed. Painting in the open is possible for small touch-ups but a full topcoat needs a controlled, filtered, temperature-managed environment or the finish will not hold and the warranty will not stand. Confirm the shed is long enough, wide enough, and tall enough for your boat plus full scaffold and staging on every side. A boat that fits the shed on paper but leaves no room for a work platform is a boat that cannot actually be painted there. Ask for the internal shed dimensions, not the external footprint, and ask about air handling and paint-booth certification if paint is in your scope.

Berths, hardstanding, and quay space

Some work happens afloat and some on the hard. A yard needs alongside berths with shore power heavy enough to run your systems, plus hardstanding that can carry your keel loads on blocks and stands. If your refit runs long, you also want to know the boat is not blocking a launch ramp that the yard needs for other clients, because that pressure becomes your problem when they want you out early. The best facilities publish their capacity plainly. Safe Harbor Lauderdale Marine Center, the largest repair and refit yard in the United States, is built around exactly this service-yard model at scale, and Rybovich lists over 60 in-water and 30 out-of-water superyacht berths.

Timing and the booking window

Capacity you cannot book is capacity you do not have. Top European yards are commonly reserved 12 to 24 months ahead for major refits. US East Coast lead times are shorter but tightening. If you need a specific window (yard time between a Med summer and a Caribbean season, say), start the conversation a year out. A yard that can suddenly fit a big refit next month is either very good at scheduling or very short of work, and the second possibility deserves a hard look.

Track record and references on similar yachts

A yard that has repainted three boats your size in the last two years knows things a yard doing its first big topcoat cannot know. Experience on similar yachts is the strongest predictor of a smooth job, so make the yard prove it. Ask for a list of comparable projects: same size class, same build material, similar scope. Steel and aluminium refits are a different craft from GRP work, and a yard fluent in one is not automatically good at the other.

Then actually call the references. This is the step owners skip and later regret. Ask the previous owner or captain the questions that matter: Did the final invoice land near the quote? How were change orders handled and priced? Did the yard hit the delivery date, and if not, why? How was the project manager to work with when something went wrong, because something always goes wrong. Would you use them again for a job this size? A yard proud of its work will hand over references without hesitation. A yard that stalls, offers only one carefully chosen contact, or claims its clients value privacy too much to talk is telling you something.

Walk the yard while a project is live. A tidy yard with organised staging, labelled materials, dust extraction running, and crew in proper PPE is a yard that manages detail. A chaotic yard with gear everywhere and boats sitting untouched under half-built scaffold is showing you how your project will be run. Trust what you see over what the sales brochure says. If you want an independent read before you commit, our own explainer on the survey process, the marine surveyor and yacht survey guide, covers how a condition or pre-refit survey documents the boat's real state so the scope and the yard's quote start from facts rather than optimism.

The quote: how to compare apples to apples

Two quotes for the same refit can differ by 40 percent and both be honest, because they are built on different assumptions. The job is to make them comparable. Never compare bottom-line numbers until you have normalised what sits underneath them.

First, insist every yard quotes against the identical written scope. Give them all the same document, the same drawings, the same equipment list. If one yard's number is far lower, find out what they left out before you celebrate. Second, separate the fixed-price items from the time-and-materials items. Predictable, well-defined work (a bottom job, anode replacement, a known list of parts) can and should be fixed price. Open-ended discovery work (corrosion of unknown extent, structural repair behind a bulkhead nobody has opened) is honestly quoted time-and-materials because no one can price the unknown. A yard that fixes a price on genuinely unknown work is either padding heavily to protect itself or setting up a change-order fight later.

Third, read the day rate and what it includes. Yard labour rates vary widely by region, and the headline hourly figure hides a lot. Ask what a labour hour actually buys: is supervision included or billed separately, are consumables and shop supplies extra, what is the markup on subcontracted trades and materials (often 10 to 20 percent), and how are lift, launch, hardstanding, shore power, waste disposal, and environmental fees charged? These line items add up to real money and they are where quotes quietly diverge. For the wider picture on how refit budgets are built and where they blow out, our yacht refit guide and costs breaks down the major cost categories, and the yacht refit cost size-by-size breakdown gives realistic ranges by vessel length so you can sanity-check any quote against the market.

Payment structure and retention

How you pay matters as much as what you pay. Structure payments against milestones so you are never significantly overpaid relative to the work actually completed. Hold a retention, commonly 5 to 10 percent, back until after delivery and a snagging period, so the yard has a reason to finish the small items that otherwise drag for months. Front-loaded payment schedules that want most of the money early shift all the risk onto you and remove the yard's incentive to hustle at the end. A fair yard will accept a sensible milestone schedule because it plans to earn every stage.

Project management and the yard's own subcontractors

The difference between a full-service yard and a service yard is who manages the trades. Understand which model you are buying, because it changes how much of the coordination lands on your captain.

A full-service yard employs or directly controls most trades and gives you one project manager as the single point of contact. You tell them what you want, they run the painters, carpenters, electricians, and engineers, and they own the schedule. MB92 and similar operations work this way. A service yard, by contrast, provides the berth, the lift, the shed, the power, and the infrastructure, and you or your project manager appoints the individual contractors. STP Palma is the classic example: the yard is the platform, and dozens of specialist businesses (painters, joiners, electronics integrators, naval architects) work on your boat under your coordination. Lauderdale Marine Center runs a comparable service-yard model in Florida.

Neither model is better in the abstract. The full-service model gives you one throat to choke and less day-to-day management, at a price premium and with less control over which specific trades touch your boat. The service-yard model gives you cheaper infrastructure, freedom to bring your own trusted contractors, and much more coordination work, which means you need a strong captain or an independent project manager who knows the local trades. Be honest about which you are equipped to run. If your team is thin, pay for the full-service yard or hire a dedicated project manager, because a service yard managed badly is where refits die.

Whichever model you choose, ask about the yard's own subcontractors directly. Who are the trades? Are they the yard's employees, long-term partners, or whoever is cheapest this week? Are they insured in their own right? Can you see their work? The name on the gate does not swing the hammer. The trades do, and a great yard with weak trades produces mediocre work. When you need a specific specialist the yard cannot supply well, bring your own. For an interior refit, the finish work makes or breaks the result, and it pays to line up a proven interior design and refit specialist rather than accept whatever joiner the yard has spare. The same goes for structural and cosmetic hull work, where a dedicated yacht fiberglass contractor will out-perform a generalist on GRP repair, fairing, and gelcoat.

Location, logistics, and cost: US vs Med vs low-cost yards

Where you refit changes the price, the quality, the tax exposure, and the logistics. The cheapest labour rate rarely wins once you add travel, downtime, and the cost of being far from parts and specialists. Weigh the whole picture.

The Mediterranean is the deepest refit market in the world. Palma has become a centre of gravity because the STP complex concentrates dozens of specialist trades in one port, and labour there runs roughly 50 to 80 euros per hour for skilled trades, meaningfully below Antibes, La Ciotat, or the Italian yards. Northern Europe (the Netherlands, Germany) is where you go for the highest-end build-quality refits, complex engineering, and the original builders of many large yachts, at a premium. The United States centres on Florida, where Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach concentrate yards, trades, and parts distribution, with strong value versus the Northeast: owners report Fort Lauderdale running well below Newport or Seattle for equivalent work.

Low-cost yards in emerging regions advertise labour rates that look irresistible on a spreadsheet. Sometimes they deliver. Often the saving evaporates once you factor the delivery voyage each way, crew costs while the boat is far from home, thin availability of specialist trades and parts, and the risk of quality problems you cannot easily fix at distance. The honest rule: a low-cost yard makes sense when the work is straightforward, the yard has a genuine track record on boats like yours, and the boat is already in the region. It makes far less sense for complex, high-finish work where being near deep trade networks is worth paying for.

Do not forget tax and flag. VAT, temporary importation rules, and duty treatment vary by country and can swing the total cost more than the labour rate. A US-flagged boat refitting in the EU, or an EU boat in the US, needs advice on temporary admission and VAT before it arrives, because getting it wrong is expensive. Foreign-flagged yachts also find some jurisdictions make tax reimbursement difficult, so plan the location and the country of origin for major suppliers early. Lauderdale Marine Center's status as a Foreign Trade Zone, for instance, has real duty implications worth understanding.

Refit regions compared, 2026

Region / hub	Typical skilled labour rate	Best for	Trade-offs
Palma, Mallorca (STP)	50 to 80 EUR/hr	Value refits, deep trade cluster, paint	Book 12 to 24 months ahead; summer congestion
Barcelona (MB92)	65 to 95 EUR/hr	Full-service large-yacht refits	Premium pricing; long lead times
Antibes / La Ciotat, France	80 to 110 EUR/hr	Large yachts, established infrastructure	Higher labour cost than Spain
Netherlands / Germany	90 to 130 EUR/hr	Highest-end engineering, builder yards	Most expensive; cold-season logistics
Fort Lauderdale, Florida (LMC)	90 to 130 USD/hr	US refits, parts access, service-yard model	Shed space for very large yachts is limited
Palm Beach, Florida (Rybovich)	95 to 140 USD/hr	Large US refits, big lift and dry dock	Premium US pricing; tightening lead times
Low-cost / emerging yards	25 to 55 USD/hr	Simple work when already in region	Thin trades/parts; quality and distance risk

Rates are indicative 2026 figures for skilled trades and vary by yard, scope, and currency. Treat them as a starting point for comparison, not a quote.

Warranty, insurance, and liens: the paperwork that protects you

The boring pages of the contract are the ones that save you when a job goes wrong. Read them before you sign, not after the finish starts crazing.

On warranty, know that under US maritime law a repair contract carries an implied warranty of workmanlike performance even if the contract says nothing, and a yard that breaches it can be liable for foreseeable losses including loss of use. That is your baseline protection. On top of it, negotiate an express warranty. A twelve month defects warranty is common in the industry. Watch for the yard limiting its warranty to labour only and pushing component failures onto the manufacturers' warranties, which is standard but means you need to track which warranty covers what. Make sure the contract spells out what happens if the yard fails to fix a warranty defect promptly: you want the right to bring in a third party and recover the cost from the yard.

On insurance, confirm the yard carries ship repairer's legal liability cover and ask for the certificate and the limit. Your own hull and machinery insurer should be told about the refit before it starts, because a major project can affect cover, and some policies require notice. Clarify in writing who insures the boat while it is in the yard's care, custody, and control, because that gap is exactly where disputes happen after a fire or a drop.

On liens, this is the trap owners never see coming. In many jurisdictions a subcontractor or supplier the yard failed to pay can place a maritime lien on your boat, even though you paid the yard in full. Protect yourself with lien waivers: a contract provision requiring the yard to confirm its subcontractors and suppliers have been paid and cannot claim against your vessel, ideally with lien releases produced at each payment milestone. If a yard resists this, treat it as a serious warning. Reputable yards handle lien waivers as routine.

Red flags: when to walk away

Some warning signs are worth failing a yard over no matter how good the rest of the pitch sounds. Here are the ones that reliably predict trouble.

• Vague scope and "we'll figure it out as we go." This is the number one predictor of runaway cost. A yard that will not pin the scope down will not pin the price down either.
• A quote far below the others. When one number is dramatically low, it is usually missing scope that will return as change orders. The cheap quote often finishes most expensive.
• Constant proposed changes to materials or design early on. A yard that keeps suggesting "improvements" before work starts may be building a change-order pipeline to lift the final bill.
• Reluctance to give references or let you walk the yard. Nothing to hide means nothing to hide. Stalling here is a tell.
• Front-loaded payment demands. Wanting most of the money before the work is done removes their incentive to finish and shifts all risk to you.
• Resistance to lien waivers or retention. These are standard protections. Pushback suggests cash-flow problems or a habit of not paying subs.
• A yard suddenly free for a major refit. Good yards are booked. Wide-open availability for a big job can signal a shortage of work, and a shortage of work has a reason.
• No named project manager. If you cannot get one accountable person who owns your schedule, coordination will fall through the cracks and land on your crew.

The yard-evaluation checklist

Run every candidate yard through the same scorecard so your comparison is fair. Score each line honestly, weight the ones that matter most for your scope, and keep the sheet for every yard side by side.

Category	What to check	Why it matters
Lift capacity	Rated tonnage of the specific travelift or hoist vs your loaded displacement, with margin	An undersized lift stops the project on day one
Shed dimensions	Internal length, width, and height vs boat plus full scaffold; paint-booth certification	No shed room, no proper paint job or warranty
Berths and hardstanding	Alongside berths, shore power rating, block and stand loads on the hard	Determines what work can happen and how long you can stay
Availability	Real booking window for your slot; realistic lead time	Capacity you cannot book is not capacity
Track record	Comparable projects by size, material, and scope in the last 2 years	Experience on similar boats predicts a smooth job
References	Three contactable owners or captains; you actually call them	The truth about cost, delays, and change orders
Yard model	Full-service vs service yard; who manages the trades	Decides how much coordination lands on your team
Subcontractors	Who the trades are, their insurance, samples of their work	The trades do the work, not the name on the gate
Quote clarity	Fixed vs T&M split, markups, fees, exclusions, all against one scope	Makes competing quotes truly comparable
Payment terms	Milestone schedule, retention, no heavy front-loading	Keeps the yard's incentives aligned with yours
Warranty	Express defects warranty term; labour vs component coverage; remedy rights	Your protection when something fails after delivery
Insurance	Ship repairer's liability certificate and limit; care-custody-control clause	Covers you if there is a fire, drop, or damage
Liens	Lien waivers and releases at each milestone	Stops unpaid subs claiming against your boat
Project manager	One named, accountable point of contact	Someone owns the schedule and answers for it
Location and tax	Region cost, logistics, VAT and temporary-importation exposure	Total cost, not just the labour rate, decides value

If a yard scores well across capacity, track record, quote clarity, and the legal protections, and you liked what you saw when you walked the site, you have a strong candidate. If it stumbles on the legal pages or the references, no amount of charm in the sales meeting should override that.

Running the project once you have chosen

Choosing the yard is most of the battle, but the first weeks of the job set the tone. Agree a written schedule with milestones and a clear change-order process before anyone lifts a tool: every extra must be quoted and approved in writing before work proceeds, with no verbal "just do it" that reappears on the invoice. Insist on a weekly progress meeting with the project manager, a photo log, and an updated cost-to-complete so surprises surface early while they are still small. Keep your own snag list running from day one rather than saving it all for the end. The YSN app makes it easy to keep vessel documents, quotes, and contractor contacts with you in the yard, so you can check a specification or message a trade from the deck instead of hunting through email; you can grab it from the download page. Owners who stay engaged, without micromanaging the trades, get better refits than owners who hand over the keys and reappear at delivery.

One last point on mindset. The yard is your partner for months, not a vendor you beat down on price. The cheapest quote that wins on a race to the bottom usually costs the most in delays, disputes, and rework. Choose the yard you trust to tell you the truth when the job gets hard, price it fairly, protect yourself properly in the contract, and then work with them. That is how a refit ends with a better boat and a relationship you would use again.

Frequently asked questions

How far in advance should I book a refit yard?

For a major refit at a top European yard, start the conversation 12 to 24 months ahead, because the best sheds and slots fill that far out. US East Coast yards have shorter lead times but they are tightening. Even a mid-size cosmetic refit deserves a few months of planning so you can compare yards properly rather than taking whatever is free next week.

What is the difference between a full-service yard and a service yard?

A full-service yard employs or directly manages the trades and gives you one project manager who owns the whole job, at a premium. A service yard provides the berth, lift, shed, and infrastructure while you or your project manager appoint the individual contractors. STP Palma is a service yard; many northern European builder yards are full-service. Choose based on how much coordination your team can handle.

How do I compare quotes from different yards fairly?

Give every yard the identical written scope and drawings so the numbers are built on the same work. Then break each quote into fixed-price items and time-and-materials items, and read the fees, markups, and exclusions underneath the headline. Only compare bottom lines after you have confirmed each quote covers the same job. A number far below the others is usually missing scope, not offering a bargain.

Should I refit in the US, the Med, or a low-cost yard?

The Med, especially Palma, offers the deepest trade cluster and strong value; northern Europe leads on high-end engineering at a premium; Florida is the US hub with good parts access. Low-cost yards make sense for straightforward work when the boat is already in the region and the yard has a real track record. For complex, high-finish work, being near deep trade networks usually beats a cheap labour rate once you count delivery and downtime.

What warranty should a refit yard give?

A twelve month defects warranty is common. Under US maritime law an implied warranty of workmanlike performance applies even without one. Watch for yards limiting cover to labour only and passing components to the manufacturers' warranties. Make sure the contract gives you the right to bring in a third party to fix a defect and recover the cost if the yard fails to remedy it promptly.

How can a subcontractor put a lien on my boat if I paid the yard?

In many jurisdictions a supplier or subcontractor the yard did not pay can file a maritime lien against your vessel regardless of whether you paid the yard in full. Protect yourself with lien waivers written into the contract and lien releases produced at each payment milestone, confirming the yard's subs and suppliers have been paid. A yard that resists this standard protection is a red flag.

How should refit payments be structured?

Tie payments to milestones so you are never significantly overpaid relative to completed work, and hold back a retention of 5 to 10 percent until after delivery and a snagging period. Avoid front-loaded schedules that want most of the money early, because they remove the yard's incentive to finish the last details and shift the risk onto you.

What are the biggest red flags when choosing a refit yard?

A vague scope, a quote far below the others, constant early proposals to change materials, reluctance to share references or let you walk the yard, front-loaded payment demands, resistance to lien waivers or retention, and no named project manager. Any one of these deserves a hard second look; several together mean walk away, no matter how polished the sales pitch.