Al Mouj Marina (Muscat)

Location

Al Mouj Marina, Al Mouj Muscat, Seeb, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, on the Gulf of Oman coast at 23 38.0 N 058 16.2 E, outside the Strait of Hormuz

Operator and ownership

the marina is the waterfront of Al Mouj Muscat, an Integrated Tourism Complex developed as a joint venture of Majid Al Futtaim Properties, Oman Tourism Development Company (Omran) and Oman National Investments Development Company (Tanmia). Formerly The Wave, Muscat, rebranded in 2018

Berths

165 per the marina's own site and the Leisure Marine Association. TYHA records 124 operational as phase one of a planned 400, and PredictWind records 132

Vessel range

8 to 65 m LOA per the marina, 10 to 40 m per TYHA. The published tariff stops at 40 m and marks 60 m and above as on application, with nothing quoted between

Depths

minimum four metres at the entrance; two to three metres at mean low water inside, with a practical maximum draught of about three metres at low tide

Breakwater

about two kilometres, described by Al Mouj Muscat as one of the largest in the world. Tidal flow in the basin is recorded as negligible

Berth fit-out

floating pontoons with six-metre-wide walkways, side-to and stern-to, catamaran berths available, shore power to 600 amps, potable water at the berth and grey and black water pump-out. No per-unit tariff is published for power or water

Fuel

fuel dock with petrol and diesel, charged at Oman's national rates. August 2026: diesel OMR 0.26 a litre, E-Plus 91 OMR 0.23, Special 95 OMR 0.24, set monthly by the Ministry of Energy and Minerals

VHF

channel 74 for the marina, channel 16 for Port Control and for the pre-arrival call

Customs

a port of entry, with immigration and customs clearance handled through licensed local agents. Noonsite's list of Omani ports of entry does not include Al Mouj, so confirm before making it your clearance port

Navigation licence

since Ministerial Decision No. 30/2026, in force early February 2026, foreign ships and marine units may not conduct any activity in Omani territorial waters without a navigation licence, applied for by an agent at least three days ahead. Fines run OMR 500 to OMR 5,000

Visas

Royal Oman Police Decision No. 109/2026 introduced a free 14-day tourist visa from 3 August 2026, with the eligible nationalities not yet published, convertible to paid categories without leaving Oman. 30-day and one-year multiple-entry visas remain on the ROP eVisa system. No crew-specific category is published

Accreditation

five Gold Anchors, the only marina in Oman to hold them, plus International Clean Marina accreditation and TYHA Superyacht Marina designation from September 2024

Haul-out

no capacity figure published at Al Mouj. The largest lift in Muscat is a 65-tonne boat hoist with three slipways at Marina Bandar Al Rowdha

Airport

Muscat International about 9 to 10 km by road, 12 to 25 minutes, taxi quoted between OMR 4.5 and OMR 11 depending on source. The marina sells a chargeable VIP airport welcome and transfer

Currency

the Omani rial has been pegged at USD 2.6008 since 1986 and the Central Bank of Oman defends the peg, so rial figures convert at a stable rate

Oman as the alternative to the Gulf proper

The strategic case for Muscat is geography. Al Mouj sits on the Gulf of Oman, outside the Strait of Hormuz, which is a materially different position from Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha. A yacht based here is not inside the Arabian Gulf, does not have to transit Hormuz to reach open water, and is a day's steam from cruising ground that most of the regional fleet never sees: the Daymaniyat Islands to the north-west and Bandar Khayran to the south-east, with the mountains of the Hajar range behind. The passage to Dubai runs the other way, north-west up the coast and round the Musandam peninsula through the Strait; the straight-line figure the distance calculators return, around 200 nautical miles, ignores the peninsula entirely, so plan on materially more water than that.

The marina is the waterfront of Al Mouj Muscat, an Integrated Tourism Complex built as a public-private joint venture between Majid Al Futtaim Properties of the UAE, the Oman Tourism Development Company (Omran) and the state-owned Oman National Investments Development Company (Tanmia). It opened as The Wave, Muscat and was rebranded Al Mouj Muscat, the Arabic for the same thing, in 2018. That matters to an owner because it explains the character of the place: a residential and hotel estate that happens to have a marina, rather than a yacht harbour that grew a town. The consequence is a very good standard of everything ashore and a thin standard of everything technical, and that trade runs through the whole of this page.

The marina, and the four berth counts in circulation

Al Mouj Marina's own site and the Leisure Marine Association both give 165 berths for yachts from 8 to 65 metres. The Yacht Harbour Association's Global Gold Anchor record gives 124 berths operational as phase one of a planned 400, accommodating yachts from 10 to 40 metres. PredictWind's marina record gives 132. The original masterplan page from The Wave era gave 400 berths and boats and yachts up to 40 metres. Four figures, four sources, and the honest position is that the marina today has somewhere between 124 and 165 berths in the water against a masterplan that always intended four times that. Anyone modelling occupancy or comparing capacity with a Gulf competitor should use the marina's own 165 and treat the 400 as an aspiration, not an asset.

What is not in dispute is the build quality. Pontoons are floating, with six-metre-wide walkways, which is unusually generous and is part of why the marina holds five Gold Anchors, the only one in Oman to do so, alongside International Clean Marina accreditation and a TYHA Superyacht Marina designation awarded in September 2024. Berths take side-to and stern-to, catamarans included. Shore power runs to 600 amps, potable water is at the berth, and there is grey and black water pump-out. The marina works VHF channel 74, keeps a dockmaster on duty 24 hours with berthing assistance round the clock, and runs a buggy service, an on-water lounge, gated access and CCTV. Position is 23 degrees 38.0 minutes north, 058 degrees 16.2 minutes east.

The tariff stops at 40 metres and the water stops at about three, so the 65-metre headline is a length and not a depth.

Depth, the entrance and the breakwater

This is the section that decides whether Al Mouj works for a given yacht. The breakwater is about two kilometres long and Al Mouj Muscat describes it as one of the largest in the world, protecting the basin from wind, tide and current. Inside it the tidal flow is recorded as negligible. The minimum depth at the entrance is given as four metres by the Leisure Marine Association. Depth inside is the constraint: PredictWind's record gives two to three metres at mean low water and rates the channel marking and the manoeuvring room as fair rather than good, and Acquera Yachting, which places yachts here, gives a maximum draught of about three metres at low tide.

Set that against the LOA claim and the arithmetic does not close. A 65-metre motor yacht typically draws three and a half to four metres and a 50-metre draws over three. On the published depths, most yachts over about 40 metres cannot lie in this basin at all regardless of what the marketing says, and the marina's own tariff acknowledges as much by stopping at 40 metres and marking everything above it as on application. The practical reading is that Al Mouj is an excellent marina for yachts up to about 35 metres, workable at 40 with a shallow hull and a confirmed berth, and a phone call rather than a booking above that. The marina also offers what it calls a sheltered and serviced anchorage, which is the honest answer for a deep yacht that wants to be in Muscat.

Khareef and shamal, and what actually reaches Muscat

The two named seasons of the region do less to Muscat than a chart-room briefing suggests, and the reason is which coast you are on. The khareef is the south-west monsoon, running through the summer and, in the Oman Met Office's description, lasting usually to mid-September, carrying moisture off the Indian Ocean and building a genuinely dangerous sea. It hits the Arabian Sea coast, which means Dhofar, Salalah and the shoreline south and west of Ras al Hadd. Muscat is not on that coast. It is on the Gulf of Oman, round the corner. Oman's Directorate General of Meteorology country outlook, read on 6 August 2026 in the middle of the khareef, gave rough conditions along the coastal areas of the Arabian Sea with a maximum wave height of four to five metres, and slight along the rest of the coasts with a maximum wave height of 1.25 metres. Al Mouj is in the second category.

The shamal is the north-westerly that blows down the long axis of the Arabian Gulf, with a winter season and a summer season, and published climatology points to the summer shamal season tending to extend from August into September. Its fetch is inside the Gulf, on the far side of the Strait of Hormuz, so what reaches the Gulf of Oman coast is wind rather than the sea that wind builds. The honest summary is that Muscat is a comparatively benign berth in both seasons and that the swell risk here is real but modest, a north-westerly chop on the approach rather than the Arabian Sea running at four metres a hundred miles down the coast. Yotters could not find a published wave or surge study for the Al Mouj basin itself, so treat the two-kilometre breakwater and the negligible tidal flow as the evidence and not a measured claim.

Clearing in, and the licence that is new this year

Al Mouj is a port of entry and states on its own services page that it handles immigration and customs clearance through licensed local agents. Cruising guidance for Oman describes the standard procedure: call Port Control on VHF 16 about an hour before arrival, wait for permission and directions on where to go for clearance, which is available around the clock, expect to be boarded by quarantine, immigration, customs and port officials, and do not put anyone ashore until clearance is complete. Noonsite's own list of Omani ports of entry names Marina Bandar Al Rowdha, Mina al Fahal, Port Salalah and the Musandam peninsula and does not name Al Mouj, so if you want certainty on a first arrival, get it in writing from the marina before you commit to it as your clearance port.

There is a much larger change that most 2025 planning material does not carry. On 26 January 2026 Oman's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology issued Ministerial Decision No. 30/2026 under the Maritime Law of Royal Decree 19/2023, in force from early February 2026. Foreign ships and marine units are prohibited from conducting any activity in Omani territorial waters without a navigation licence. Licences are issued for a single voyage, multiple voyages or a scheduled cruise, the cruise category running a year with entry and exit dates specified per voyage. An agent applies at least three days before entry with the registration certificate, insurance and P and I documentation, and the authority has three days to decide. The agent must register the vessel in the Royal Oman Police customs system, handle passports and customs, settle fees and fines, and obtain a departure certificate; a licensed vessel must leave within 24 hours of expiry. Naval and military vessels, ships entering only to load or unload at a port and genuine emergencies are exempt. Penalties run from OMR 500 to OMR 5,000, with OMR 2,000 for operating without a licence and up to OMR 5,000 for false information. The published summaries do not carve out pleasure yachts.

Visas for owners and for crew

Oman has just made this easier, and by a wide margin. The Royal Oman Police issued Decision No. 109/2026 introducing a new free 14-day tourist visa, effective 3 August 2026, granting fee-free tourist entry to nationals of countries determined by the competent authorities. The official list of eligible nationalities had not been published when this page was written. A holder can convert to a paid tourist category without leaving Oman, and 30-day tourist visas and a one-year multiple-entry visa remain available through the ROP eVisa system. Separately, and predating this, nationals of over a hundred countries were already exempt from obtaining a visa in advance for stays of up to 14 days.

The gap is crew. Yotters could find no published Omani visa category specific to yacht crew arriving by sea, no seafarer or C1/D equivalent named in the ROP material, and no statement from the marina about how a crew list is treated on arrival. In practice a crew joining or leaving a yacht in Muscat is being handled inside the general tourist and agent framework, and the agent's obligation under Decision 30/2026 to complete passport procedures and comply with residence laws is where it lands. For a yacht planning crew rotations through Muscat over a season, that is the question to put to the agent in writing before the first arrival, because it is the one thing on this page that is genuinely not documented anywhere public.

What a berth costs

Al Mouj publishes a full annual tariff, which puts it ahead of most marinas in this guide and nearly all of them in the Gulf. The standard annual rates on the marina's berthing page, read on 6 August 2026, in Omani rials, with the resident and loyalty rate in brackets, run: 10 m at 2,465 (1,726); 12 m at 3,550 (2,485); 15 m at 5,380 (3,766); 18 m at 7,510 (5,257); 20 m at 8,970 (6,279); 25 m at 13,080 (9,156); 30 m at 17,490 (12,243); 35 m at 21,975 (15,382); and 40 m at 26,310 (18,417). Anything at 60 m and above is on application. Residents of Al Mouj get 30 per cent off. The Omani rial has been pegged at USD 2.6008 since 1986 and the Central Bank of Oman defends that peg, so the conversions are stable: a 20-metre berth is about USD 23,300 a year and a 40-metre berth about USD 68,400.

Read per metre, that is roughly OMR 449 or USD 1,170 a metre a year at 20 metres and OMR 658 or USD 1,710 a metre at 40, which is competitive against European annual contracts and cheap against Dubai. What is not published is everything short of a year. There is no daily rate, no weekly rate and no monthly rate on the berthing page, which is a real gap for a yacht passing through rather than basing here, and no published tariff for electricity or water despite 600-amp supplies being available. Fuel is described only as charged at local rates. The tariff also stops dead at 40 metres, with nothing between 40 and 60, so an owner of a 45-metre yacht has neither a published price nor a stated berth.

Fuel, provisioning and what there is ashore

Oman's fuel prices are set monthly by the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, announced on or near the first of the month and identical at every station in the country. For August 2026 the published prices per litre are OMR 0.23 for E-Plus 91, OMR 0.24 for Special 95 and OMR 0.26 for diesel. GlobalPetrolPrices independently put Omani diesel at OMR 0.26, about USD 0.67 a litre, on 3 August 2026, and records the price as unchanged over the preceding twelve months on its own measure, though the published Omani monthly series moved from 208 baisa in late 2025 to 258 by March 2026, so read it as static since the spring rather than fixed. The marina has a fuel dock with petrol and diesel and charges at those local rates. There is no published bonded or duty-free bunkering regime for visiting yachts, so budget the pump price.

Provisioning and the shore side are the part of Al Mouj that genuinely works. The estate around the marina carries a supermarket, a bank, laundry, a shopping centre, hotels and resorts, and the Al Mouj Walk, Marsa Plaza and Promenade retail and dining strips run along the water; the marina piazza itself holds restaurants including HuqqA for modern Turkish and Block2 for burgers, indoors and al fresco, which matters when the August air is at 41 degrees. Berth holders get 50 per cent off gym day passes and 15 per cent off Al Mouj Golf rounds and food and beverage. The cruising target on the doorstep, the Daymaniyat Islands Nature Reserve, needs an entry permit from Oman's Environment Authority, and landing or camping on the islands is prohibited entirely from 1 May to 31 October to protect nesting wildlife, although snorkelling and diving around them continue through that window. Camping when it is allowed is capped at 12 people or five tents in designated places.

Yard support and the airport, honestly assessed

The airport is the strongest single argument for Muscat and the yard support is the weakest. Muscat International is about nine to ten kilometres from the marina, roughly 12 to 25 minutes by road depending on the hour, with a transfer service quoting OMR 4.5 to 6 for the taxi and residents reporting OMR 9 to 11 for the same trip, so agree the fare before you get in. The marina sells a VIP airport welcome and transport as a chargeable extra. Ten minutes from a wide-bodied international airport to the passerelle is a shorter transfer than almost any Mediterranean marina offers and it is the reason owners keep looking at Muscat.

The technical side does not match it. The Yacht Harbour Association's record lists a hoist and lift-out, a boatyard, engineering trades, marine electronics and a chandlery as available at Al Mouj, but no capacity figure for any of them is published anywhere Yotters could find. The real haul-out in Muscat is at the other marina, Marina Bandar Al Rowdha across the city, which is served by three slipways and a 65-tonne boat hoist. There is nothing in Oman that will lift a 40-metre hull, and no superyacht refit yard in the country, so anything structural means a passage to the UAE or further. Bandar Al Rowdha itself runs 220 wet berths, 184 dry berths and 65 jet-ski berths, with about three metres of draught, so it is not an alternative for a large yacht either. Plan Muscat as a base with routine service, not as a place to have work done.

Pour qui: An owner with a yacht up to about 35 metres and under three metres of draught who wants a Gulf-region base outside the Strait of Hormuz, real cruising ground on the doorstep and an international airport twenty minutes from the passerelle, and who does not need a lift, a refit yard or a berth for anything approaching 50 metres.