Camper & Nicholsons Port Louis Marina, Grenada

Where the marina actually is

Port Louis Marina occupies St George's Lagoon on the edge of Grenada's capital, immediately south of the Carenage, the horseshoe waterfront that gives the old town its postcard shape. Waterway Guide gives the position as N 12 degrees 02.638 minutes, W 061 degrees 44.964 minutes. The marina sits inside its own pontoon system in the calmest water in the harbour complex, with the Port Louis Maritime Village built along the same waterfront: a run of restaurants, a batik boutique, a chandlery and provisioning shops on the pontoons themselves, rather than a walk away.

The lagoon was not always a marina. Caribbean Compass, reporting on the project in November 2007, described the site as having served for years as a de facto dump and sewer, the successor location to Grenada Yacht Services, a marina that had operated there through the 1960s and 70s before falling derelict. Clearing it required removing, in the publication's words, hundreds of tons of derelict vessels, cars, a helicopter tail and scrap metal before the first berths could be built. The Victory Bar and Grill, the site's first restaurant, opened in April 2007 while that work was still under way.

From de Savary's project to Camper & Nicholsons's marina

Peter de Savary, the developer behind luxury resort projects around the world and, per his own Wikipedia entry, a sponsor of the original Grenada Sailing Festival, bought into Grenada and set out to build a marina and resort village on the lagoon. Caribbean Compass put the scale of the announced plan at an EC$1.5 billion development: a marina for up to 350 slips and yachts to 100 m, two hotels, 37 villa lots, 22 hillside apartments and the West Indian-style marina village whose shops still trade today. The original target, set in 2007, was to have 70 large yachts berthed by 1 December that year for the holiday season.

The project changed hands before that vision was finished. A Master Agreement transferring it to Camper & Nicholsons Marina Investments was signed on 24 December 2007, with the property transfer recorded in Grenada's Deeds Registry on 7 March 2008. Campaigners writing as Citizens in Defence of Grenada's Lands and Heritage, publishing through the Bajan Reporter in 2010, documented what they called an absence of transparency and accountability around the land reclamation and fill work that followed, and noted the development had occupied Lagoon Park, an area fishermen, boat owners and water-taxi operators had used for generations. By August 2010 the same campaigners recorded phase six complete, 30,000 square metres of berth area built, and the marina valued at roughly US$28.6 million, with no superyacht berths sold in the recession year of 2009 and only two or three agreed in early 2010.

cnmarinas.com's own page caps the marina at 105 m. The same company's press material for the same 30 superyacht berths says 30 to 110 m. Waterway Guide's facilities panel, built from the marina's own listing data, caps the largest vessel it takes at 300 ft, 91 m. Three numbers, one operator.

The berth count and the number that will not sit still

Camper & Nicholsons's own marina page and its listing on Superyacht Services Guide both give 227 berths, 30 of them reserved for superyachts. Waterway Guide's independently maintained facilities panel counts 224, a difference of three that is well within normal churn as berths are subdivided or combined. Older press material, some of it still live online from a 2013 charter-season article and repeated as recently as a 2024 development piece, gives a figure of 160 berths; given the marina's own current count and a decade of expansion work in between, that number reads as stale rather than current. A 90 m by 18.5 m superyacht berth has separately been marketed for sale on a 30-year lease, at price on application, through the broker Inwards Marine.

The vessel-length question is less tidy. cnmarinas.com's own descriptive text gives a maximum of 105 m. The same company's press material for its 30 dedicated superyacht berths puts the range at 30 to 110 m. Waterway Guide's facilities panel, which draws its numbers from the marina's own listing data, caps the largest vessel accommodated at 300 ft, or about 91 m. None of the three sources is dated later than the others in a way that would resolve the gap, and Yotters could not confirm which number the marina would actually honour for a booking at the top of that range. As with any marina that publishes several different numbers for the same fact, get the current maximum in writing before committing a large yacht to a season here.

What a berth costs, and why nobody outside can say

Port Louis Marina publishes no berth tariff. A dedicated 2026 comparison of cheapest marinas in the Eastern Caribbean checked directly and reported plainly: no rate card published, quote on request, and that the per-foot figures carried by some third-party cruising guides are neither dated nor confirmed by the marina, so it declined to reproduce them. Yotters follows the same rule here rather than repeat a sub-US$1-per-foot-per-day figure that still appears on a handful of older sites with no date attached. To get a number, request a quote through cnmarinas.com or call the marina office directly on +1 473 435 7432; an SSCA member discount is reported by the same 2026 survey, again without a published figure attached to it.

The clearest actual data point on pricing comes sideways, from the Royal Ocean Racing Club's own competitor notes for its Transatlantic Race: finishers get five days of complimentary berthing at Port Louis Marina, after which a 20 percent discount applies to the daily, weekly or monthly rate. That structure only makes commercial sense for a marina confident boats will stay on, provision, refuel and spend once the free days run out, which fits everything else about how the marina positions itself, as a destination rather than a stopover. It is also, absent an actual rate card, the only figure Yotters could verify that ties a real discount to a real published rate class.

The new fuel dock, and what it replaces

Each superyacht berth at Port Louis Marina now has its own diesel outlet set in a bunded pit, connected to the yacht by a mobile hose reel rather than a fixed dispenser. The system is described as primarily gravity-fed, with pumps sited only at the fuel tanks, which the marina says makes fuelling at the berth quiet and does not require a bunkering truck to come alongside. A separate gasoline dock serves tenders and smaller craft. The fuel supplied is ULSD, Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel, with on-request quotes for bulk orders including duty-free options. Trade press, including Bunkerspot, dated the operational launch to on or around 10 October 2025.

The marina's own account of the system, published 4 February 2026, describes a formal inauguration rather than a quiet switch-on: a launch ceremony bringing together general manager Zara Tremlett, Sol Grenada general manager Collin Francis, Grenada Tourism Authority chief executive Stacey Liburd, Grenada Port Authority chief executive Frank Redhead and Grenada's acting prime minister. Tremlett called the investment a cornerstone of the marina's commitment to world-class amenities, directly addressing the needs of the yachting sector; Liburd, for the tourism authority, framed it as making Grenada a more attractive port of call likely to encourage longer stays and more local spending. Read plainly, the fuel dock is a competitive move as much as a convenience: Grenada is pitching itself against the northern Caribbean bases that already had this kind of service.

No haul-out here, and a data mix-up worth knowing about

Port Louis Marina is a wet-berth and fuelling operation, not a yard. The nearest working travel lift is at Spice Island Marine in Prickly Bay, rated at 70 tons and able to take a boat to 85 ft LOA, 25 ft beam and 13 ft draft. For anything larger, Clarkes Court Boatyard in Clarkes Court Bay operates a 242-ton lift that multiple cruising sources describe as the largest in the Caribbean. Both are independent businesses on other parts of the island's south coast, reachable by road or a short coastal passage, not extensions of Port Louis Marina itself.

That makes one entry in Waterway Guide's own facilities panel for Port Louis Marina worth flagging rather than repeating uncritically: it lists a 242-ton travel lift as an on-site capability. Given that figure matches Clarkes Court's well-documented lift exactly, and no other source, including Camper & Nicholsons's own marina page, claims a travel lift on site at Port Louis, this reads as a data mix-up between two Grenada facilities in a third-party directory rather than a real service. Anyone planning a haul-out around a stay at Port Louis Marina should confirm capacity and dates directly with Spice Island Marine or Clarkes Court rather than assume the marina itself can lift the boat.

The hurricane-belt pitch, and the two storms that tested it

Grenada's position south of the main hurricane belt is the commercial reason a Caribbean owner would base a boat here for the season rather than migrate north or south with the fleet each year, and cruising-insurance guides and brokers repeat the same claim: cheaper lay-up cover than islands further north, because underwriters recognise the lower statistical risk. That advantage is real, but it is not zero risk, and Grenada's own history makes the case bluntly. Hurricane Ivan struck the island directly on 7 September 2004 as a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 120 mph, the first direct hit since Hurricane Janet in 1955. It damaged an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the island's buildings and hit the yachting fleet specifically: at Spice Island Marine alone, half of about 800 boats stored ashore were significantly damaged, 15 sank and 50 were washed up on beaches.

Twenty years later, Hurricane Beryl made landfall on Carriacou, part of the same three-island state, on 1 July 2024 as a high-end Category 4 storm that went on to strengthen to Category 5, the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record. It stripped Carriacou of vegetation and damaged an estimated 98 percent of its buildings, with one death reported on mainland Grenada and hundreds sheltering there. Port Louis Marina itself, on the mainland at St George's, came through undamaged: general manager Zara Tremlett credited a storm plan that included reinforcing the docks with strengthening ratchets, adding extra mooring lines to yachts still in the basin, and closing the marina 24 hours ahead of landfall under government guidance. The honest reading is that the marina's own preparation worked when tested, not that the island is somehow immune, and a boat owner weighing a Grenada hurricane season should treat the geography as a real but partial advantage.

Clearing in and what's on the pontoon

A yacht arriving from outside Grenadian waters clears in at one of two designated ports of entry: Port Louis Marina at St George's or Carriacou Marine at Tyrrel Bay, with the general guidance that vessels coming from the north favour Carriacou and those arriving from the south favour Port Louis. Grenada runs the SailClear advance web notification service, letting a crew list be filed before arrival; customs still wants four physical copies of the crew list on arrival, along with passports, visas where required, immigration cards and clearance from the last port of call. The Q flag and Grenada's own courtesy flag fly from the starboard spreader until the captain has cleared with the authorities in person, before any other crew member lands. The cruising permit issued at clearance is understood to run for about a month and can be renewed. Maurice Bishop International Airport lies 7 to 8 km away, a 15 to 25 minute transfer depending on traffic.

Once cleared, the Port Louis Maritime Village sits on the same waterfront as the berths: Victory Bar and Grill, run by restaurateur Uli Kuhn, serves an international, Indian and Caribbean menu with a substantial wine cellar; Knife and Fork covers breakfast through dinner in a cafe and restaurant format; YOLO Sushi Bar adds an air-conditioned dining room and deck. Art Fabrik sells hand-made batik alongside a chandlery and provisioning shops, and the marina has its own pool. The Carenage and the old town of St George's, with its market, cathedral and steep hillside streets, are a short walk or a quick water-taxi ride away. The marina's own calendar carries the tradition forward from de Savary's original sponsorship of the Grenada Sailing Festival: Grenada Sailing Week, held 26 to 31 January in the 2026 season, and the Spice Island Billfish Tournament, running 26 to 30 January the same year, both centre on Port Louis Marina's docks.

A chi si rivolge: An owner or captain who wants a genuine season base south of the hurricane belt, with real customs on the pontoon, a fuel dock built to superyacht standard and a restaurant row a hundred metres from the passerelle, and who is prepared to get every load-bearing number, the berth tariff, the true maximum LOA, the depth alongside, confirmed in writing rather than taken from any one of the marina's own conflicting pages.