Anguilla

A Quiet Island About to Get Its First Superyacht Marina

Port Nimara sits on Anguilla's southwest coast, between the Cap Juluca and Altamer estates on Maundays Bay, and is being built as a joint venture of TEI Inc, SF Investments and Antillean Development under CEO David Mizrahi. Excavation of the basin began on 4 December 2024, offshore pontoon fabrication started in Sweden the same year, and Consigli is the lead construction partner alongside SF Marina and local contractors. Mizrahi has described the project as intended to establish, in his words, a world-class maritime destination that honors Anguilla's natural allure while ushering in a new era of economic growth for the island. The marina will carry its own dedicated customs and immigration facility, so a yacht arriving at Port Nimara will clear in on site rather than dinghy ashore to Sandy Ground.

The wider development is larger than the marina alone. A 62-room hotel under the Equinox brand, 18 beachfront villas and up to 35 hillside homes are planned around the basin, with residence sales beginning in early 2026, marina slips available from 2027 and the hotel itself following in 2029. Estimates of the jobs it will create differ by source: YachtCharterFleet puts the figure at 300 to 500, while Anguilla Focus reports closer to 700, split between roughly 200 direct marina and hospitality roles and 500 in supporting sectors. Neither source reconciles the gap, so treat the true figure as somewhere in that range rather than settled. What is not in question is the starting point: before Port Nimara, Anguilla offered a yacht nothing beyond a privately owned mooring ball or open anchor off Road Bay.

Clearing In: Road Bay and the Marine Park Regime

Noonsite and Doyle Guides give office hours as 08:30 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 16:00 with a lunch closure; a cruiser's 2019 log for the yacht Cherubino records the same office working straight through 08:00 to 16:00 with no break. Both describe the same building by the beach, and both agree the captain must complete clearance in person, typically with four copies of the crew list and, often, proof of clearance from the last port. Most owners route this through a local agent such as AXA Yacht Services, which handles clearance formalities, visas and provisioning on a 24-hour basis and can also help pick an anchorage among Anguilla's seven bays and four offshore cays.

Clearing in only covers Road Bay itself. Anywhere else on the island, including day trips to the offshore cays, requires a separate cruising permit, and the fee scales with the boat. One log prices it at US$28 a day for a vessel under 5 gross registered tons, US$56 a day from 5 to 20 tons, and US$140 a day above that, with a seventh day free after six are paid; Caribbean Compass separately quotes a top rate nearer US$150 a day or US$900 a week for larger yachts, a figure that does not cleanly match the tiered log and which this page reports rather than resolves. Road Bay itself sits outside the marine protected area and carries some of the lowest anchoring fees anywhere in the Eastern Caribbean, which is the practical reason most short visits never leave it.

Port Nimara's first 118 berths, for yachts up to 240 feet, open in 2027 on an island that has never had a marina at all.

Where to Anchor: Road Bay and the Five Bays

Road Bay is roughly three quarters of a mile wide and half a mile deep, approached from the west with no off-lying hazards and gently shelving depths. Cherubino's skipper anchored on the north side of the informally marked channel to the RoRo dock in 3 to 4 metres, describing the holding in soft sand as excellent; the south side runs 4 to 5 metres. All mooring balls in the bay are privately owned rather than a managed field, so most visiting yachts simply anchor. Meads Bay, a short hop south, sits beneath Malliouhana's bluff and is one of the calmer options when the trades are up; Rendezvous Bay and Cove Bay see less traffic again.

The day cays are the other reason to leave Road Bay. Sandy Island has a lunch-only beach restaurant and a mooring field capped at 65 feet; Prickly Pear and Dog Island offer similar day stops inside the marine park, each carrying its own permit and mooring fee on top of the general cruising permit. Cap Juluca, on Maundays Bay where Port Nimara is now rising, tenders guests ashore depending on sea conditions and vessel size for dinner at Pimms, its Moorish-arched restaurant looking back across the bay. None of these bays, Road Bay included, currently offer fuel, chandlery or a managed berth, which is precisely the gap Port Nimara is built to close from 2027.

What the Island Cannot Give a Yacht

Doyle Guides and Cherubino's own log agree on this point without qualification: there is no fuel dock, no meaningful chandlery and no grocery infrastructure at Road Bay. Water is typically jerry-canned from shore. A rental car reaches the island's main supermarket, Best Buy, but crews provisioning for a full charter week or a longer stay generally route the order through St Martin, twenty minutes away by ferry, or through a local agent. AXA Yacht Services is the name that keeps coming up for this, run day to day by an agent known locally as Gabi, offering clearance, visas, provisioning and concierge support as one package for a crew that does not want to spend its stay chasing logistics on an island built around villas and beaches rather than a working waterfront.

What the island lacks in dockside infrastructure it makes up in what actually reaches the plate. Jeremy Bearman, executive chef at The Restaurant at Malliouhana, has said getting good product on Anguilla is not as tough as he expected it would be, a line that reads as faint praise until you consider it is coming from a chef running a fine-dining kitchen on an island with no wholesale market of its own. Carrie Bogar, the chef-owner of Veya, works in the same gap from the other direction, describing her own food as Caribbean mixed with an Asian vibe, built from whatever fresh product the island's small supply chain and her own relationships can deliver. Provisioning here is a solved problem for anyone willing to pay an agent; it is not yet a problem the island has solved for itself.

The Draw: Restaurants Built for Yacht Guests

Malliouhana, the only Auberge Resort property in the Caribbean, sits on twenty five acres above Meads Bay, one of the five protected anchorages, with The Restaurant at Malliouhana serving sea to table cooking under Bearman that draws comparisons well beyond the island's size. Cap Juluca, on Maundays Bay, tenders guests to Pimms for a Moorish-arched dining room built around Caribbean and European fusion cooking and fresh seafood. Veya, run independently by Bogar, and the more casual Sandy Island Beach Restaurant and Bayside Bar and Grill at Crocus Bay round out a dining scene that BOAT International has covered specifically for pairing island-casual settings with Michelin-level food, an unusual combination for an island of Anguilla's size.

The other half of the appeal is what is absent. Anguilla has 33 white sand beaches spread across an island served by one main road and six traffic lights, and until Port Nimara there has been no marina to concentrate arrivals, no cruise terminal, and no equivalent of St Barths' Gustavia waterfront scene. For an owner or a CEO reading the market rather than just the menu, that combination, real cooking, low density, and a marina now under construction rather than already saturated, is the case for looking at Anguilla now rather than after Port Nimara opens and the island's profile catches up with its kitchens.

Hurricane Season and the Weather Window

Irma killed one person on Anguilla, left an estimated 90 per cent of roads impassable, and knocked out power into early 2018, according to post-storm reporting compiled by ReliefWeb and the West India Committee. The island's resorts, marinas-in-waiting and restaurants have since been rebuilt, in several cases top to toe, but the storm is recent enough, and the island exposed enough, sitting well out in the Atlantic-facing arc of the Leewards, that no cruising plan for Anguilla should treat hurricane season as a formality.

Caribbean yacht insurance reflects that exposure directly. Policies typically run 1 to 1.5 per cent of the yacht's agreed value a year, with a separate named-storm deductible commonly set at 10 per cent of that value, and most policies carry a named-storm or haul-out warranty requiring the yacht to reach a nominated safe location, often out of the water, within 48 to 72 hours of a storm being named for the region. A policy's hurricane box, its permitted navigation limits for the season, will typically require a boat based in Anguilla through the summer to have a real haul-out plan on the books, whether that means St Martin, Antigua or further south to the ABC islands, rather than an intention to simply watch the forecast.

Getting There and What a Buyer Should Check

A yacht itself must still clear separately at Road Bay regardless of how its owner or guests travel, and most crews use a local agent, commonly AXA Yacht Services, to manage that process alongside the cruising permit for anywhere beyond the bay. Operators such as Calypso Charters run scheduled fast-ferry links between Blowing Point and Princess Juliana specifically for this crew and guest traffic, which is the practical reason Anguilla functions, for now, as an extension of St Martin's logistics rather than a self-sufficient base.

For a buyer or an operator weighing time and money here, the honest checklist runs: no marina until Port Nimara's 2027 opening, so budget for an agent and an open anchorage in the meantime; marine park permit fees that add up quickly on a longer stay rather than a single night in Road Bay; a real, recent hurricane history that should shape any summer haul-out plan rather than an afterthought; and a dining and privacy offer that, by the account of the chefs actually cooking there, already outperforms the island's infrastructure. The nearest full-service alternative, IGY Simpson Bay Marina in St Maarten, sits just across the channel for anyone who wants a proper berth, fuel and a chandlery while Port Nimara is still under construction.

Für wen: An owner or charter guest who wants Michelin-level cooking and a near-empty anchorage more than a marina berth, and an operator or investor watching Port Nimara turn a day-stop off St Martin into a fixed base on the northeast Caribbean circuit by 2027.