Marina di Porto Cervo (Sardinia)

The approach and the inlet

The marina lies inside a narrow granite inlet on the Costa Smeralda, roughly 41 degrees 08 minutes north, 9 degrees 31 minutes east. The approach is straightforward in daylight and the inlet is genuinely well sheltered, which is the reason the Aga Khan's consortium picked this bay in the first place. Depths in the inlet run from about seven metres down to under two at the head, so the deep water is at the outer end where the marina puts the largest yachts. The port monitors VHF 16, 11 and 9 and runs a 24 hour watch at the New Marina.

The wind that governs the coast is the mistral out of the north-west, and it can blow hard enough to shut down tender work and make the outside passages unpleasant for days. Inside the inlet the effect is muted. Easterlies are the direction that troubles the anchorage off the entrance, and they are rare here. Cala Granu, a few minutes round the corner, is the standard bolthole when the mistral is up, with a shallow sandy bottom that holds well.

Two harbours and what they take

The marina runs as two harbours. The New Marina is open year-round with 24 hour VHF cover. The Old Port opens 1 June and closes 30 September, which is the single most useful thing an owner can know about capacity here, because roughly a third of the water disappears from the offer outside those four months. Total berthing is quoted at 700, of which 100 are sized for megayachts.

The published envelope is 160 metres maximum length, eight metres maximum draught and no beam restriction, on floating docks with full service alongside. Some secondary listings quote lower figures of around 100 metres and six metres, which reflect particular pontoons and not the marina's outer capability. In practice the biggest yachts lie at the deep end on the New Marina quays and everything else is fitted around them. Berthing is alongside or stern-to depending on the position, with berthing assistance provided.

Ten weeks at full pitch and then the Old Port closes on the last day of September.

The berthing reality in August

The honest answer for the first fortnight of August is that Porto Cervo is closed. Charter-market guidance published for 2026 describes the inventory for those two weeks as functionally claimed by around 1 May and effectively gone by mid-May, and advises anyone enquiring inside six weeks to plan on an anchorage. That is not a marketing line. It is how the harbour works.

The fallback is well established and perfectly comfortable. Yachts lie at Cala Granu or off Porto Cervo Sud and run guests in by tender, which is what a large part of the fleet does anyway because the anchorages here are excellent. Pevero bay next door is sheltered from the west and holds well on sand and rock, though the southern side is now a buoy field and there is no public tender landing in Cala Romantica. Outside the peak, from June and again from September, space at the marina is obtainable at reasonable notice.

Who owns it, and how a berth is obtained

The marina, the shipyard, the Pevero golf club and the four Costa Smeralda hotels all belong to Smeralda Holding, an Italian company that has been an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority since 2012. IGY Marinas runs the marina and the yard under a management agreement, renewed on 21 February 2025. So an owner deals with IGY at the quay and with a single landlord for almost everything ashore.

Transient and seasonal berths are booked direct with the marina. Longer tenure exists in the form of concession leases that are traded privately through berth brokers, and these carry an expiry date that an owner must check before he pays for one, since a listed concession can be close to its end. Annual arrangements at the New Marina suit yachts that use Sardinia as a summer base. The best positions are held by returning owners and rarely surface.

What it costs, from the published card

Porto Cervo publishes a daily tariff for the New Marina and it is a great deal more specific than the charter-market guidance usually quoted. The 2026 card works in ten categories set by length and beam together, running from category I at 6.5 m and 2.5 m up to category X at 55 m and 10 m, with a category X+ for anything longer or wider. Rates include VAT, which the card applies at 10 per cent where allowed. A category IX yacht, up to 40 m and 10 m of beam, pays EUR 3,698 a day between 1 and 20 August, EUR 2,571 a day from 10 July to 5 September, EUR 1,069 in June and EUR 101 in January to March. Category X, to 55 m, pays EUR 5,437 and EUR 3,780 across the same August and high-summer windows. Above 55 m the card stops quoting a berth and starts charging by the square metre, at EUR 7.38 per square metre per day from 10 July to 5 September.

The headline rate is not the invoice. Water, electricity and refuse are billed as separate daily charges by the same category. For a category IX yacht that is EUR 650 a day of electricity, EUR 65 of water and EUR 89 of refuse, so the real August day rate is EUR 4,502 rather than EUR 3,698, and a fortnight in the first half of August comes to EUR 63,028 before any pass, deposit or fuel. On top of that sit a EUR 20 electrical connection charge, a Molo A and ISPS zone pass at EUR 50, an ISPS guard at EUR 40 an hour and a refundable socket deposit that runs from EUR 200 for 32 A to EUR 950 for 250 A. Berths on the outer side of Pier A are dynamically priced and float between the category VIII and X+ rates. A yacht committing to the whole season pays EUR 195,819 in category IX and EUR 325,707 in category X for 1 May to 31 October, against EUR 15,882 and EUR 23,640 for the 1 November to 30 April winter contract, which is the clearest statement of what August is worth here. Rates for the Old Port are not published at all and come by email.

Power, water, waste and the yard

Shore power is offered at 16, 32, 63, 125 and 250 amps, which covers a large yacht running its systems alongside without leaning on generators. Water, fuel, waste collection, laundry and provisioning are all handled at the berth, and the marina runs wifi and 24 hour security across the site. The Old Port and New Marina have separate offices and separate numbers, which catches out crews arriving in the shoulder season.

The real advantage over most destination marinas is the Cantiere Porto Cervo on site, a full-service yard in the same ownership that handles repair, maintenance, fitting-out and full refits. A fault that would otherwise mean a delivery passage to Genoa or La Spezia can often be dealt with in the bay. For scheduled heavy work most owners still go to the mainland yards, but the yard removes the risk of a broken week in August.

Security, privacy and how visible the yacht is

Security is 24 hours and the pontoons are controlled, which for a marina inside a private resort development means the yacht is behind more than one layer. The Costa Smeralda has been built and policed since the 1960s around the assumption that the people using it want to be left alone, and that culture holds.

Visibility is a different question in August. The marina quay becomes an evening promenade, the boats are photographed continuously, and the walk from the passerelle to the Piazzetta is short and public. It is nothing like Monaco during the show, but nor is it private. Owners who want to disappear use the anchorages around the Maddalena archipelago and come in only when they want to be ashore.

Ashore, the airport and a family week

Olbia Costa Smeralda airport is about 31 kilometres away, roughly 35 to 40 minutes by road, with summer connections across Europe and jet handling on site. That is the shortest airport run of any marquee Mediterranean marina, which matters when guests rotate weekly. The village behind the marina is small and entirely purpose-built, with the Piazzetta at its centre, boutiques, and the four resort hotels at Cala di Volpe, Romazzino, Pitrizza and Cervo within a few minutes' drive.

For a week with a family the strength is the water. The beaches of the Costa Smeralda are among the best in the Mediterranean, the Maddalena archipelago is an hour away by tender or a short cruise by yacht, and the Pevero golf course sits behind the village. What Porto Cervo does not have is a town with any life of its own. There is no old quarter, no market and little to walk around, so families who want culture take the yacht to Corsica or the Italian mainland.

The calendar, and the honest downside

The Yacht Club Costa Smeralda gives the year its fixed points. For 2026 that means the Giorgio Armani Superyacht Regatta on 26 to 30 May, the Rolex TP52 World Championship on 15 to 20 June, the Palermo to Porto Cervo to Monte Carlo race on 18 to 23 August, the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup on 6 to 12 September and the Rolex Swan Cup on 13 to 19 September. Note that the superyacht regatta lost its long-standing Loro Piana title and now runs under Giorgio Armani.

The downside is the shape of the year. Porto Cervo is intense for about ten weeks and closed for the rest, the Old Port shuts entirely from October to May, and much of the village goes with it. Prices in the peak are the highest in the Mediterranean and there is no competitive alternative ashore because one holding company owns the hotels, the golf, the yard and the marina. A yacht based here full-time spends eight months in a resort that is not open.

What the yard can actually lift

Cantiere Porto Cervo sits inside the marina and in the same ownership, which is a real advantage over most destination ports, but the machinery has limits worth knowing before a season is planned around it. The travel lift is a rubber-tyred open-end machine rated to 40 tonnes, which covers tenders, sportsboats and the small end of the sailing fleet and nothing else. Above that the yard works through a hydraulically operated horizontal trolley on the slipway, which moves boats into the covered sheds and is rated for hulls up to 45 m in length, 8.5 m of beam and 3.2 m of draught. The sheds themselves take stored boats of any type up to 250 tonnes, across three buildings totalling 7,360 square metres with fire protection and forced ventilation.

So the honest position is that a 40 m motor yacht drawing 3 m and carrying 9 m of beam is at the edge of what can come out of the water here, and a 60 m yacht cannot be lifted at Porto Cervo at all. What the yard does well is everything that can be done afloat or on the outside hardstanding, where repair, maintenance and conversion work is carried out on units up to 45 m. The trades on site cover diesel and petrol engines, electrical, electronic, radio-navigation and sound insulation work, carpentry, joinery, painting and onboard systems, with a 6 m lathe for shaft line grinding. Anything needing a bigger lift leaves the island, most often for the Ligurian yards at Genoa and La Spezia.

The wind that complicates the entrance

The mistral out of the north-west is the wind that governs the coast and it is the one most crews plan for. The marina's own technical sheet names a different one for the approach. Access to the harbour can be awkward in the Grecale, the north-easterly, which comes in over the mouth of the inlet rather than down it. In front of the main quay the marina has laid a run of buoys that allow a bow mooring to be taken without letting go an anchor, which is the practical answer to a Grecale day and worth requesting rather than discovering.

Two approach notes come from the same sheet. From seaward the harbour is picked up by steering for Capo Ferro, the dark headland 46 m high carrying its lighthouse north of Porto Cervo, and then by the two entrance lights of the bay together with the profile of the hotels and the village behind. Crews who do not know the area are specifically told to avoid the Passo delle Galere between the Li Nibani inlets, which is easily mistaken for the Passo delle Rocche and carries treacherous soundings. Inside, the marina publishes a maximum draught of 8 m, and the inlet shoals from about 7 m to under 2 m towards its head, so the deep water and the large yachts are both at the outer end.

Who it is for: An owner whose summer is built around six weeks in Sardinia and who bases the yacht somewhere else for the other ten months.