Pier Sixty-Six Marina (Fort Lauderdale)

The first berth inside the inlet

Port Everglades is a man-made harbour cut straight in from the Atlantic, and its entrance channel runs 500 feet wide and 45 feet deep before narrowing to 450 feet and 42 feet through the turning basin. That is commercial shipping water, dredged for tankers and cruise ships, and a yacht of any size simply comes and goes. Pier Sixty-Six sits on the 17th Street Causeway immediately inside, which makes it the first marina a yacht reaches after the sea buoy.

The practical value of that position is time. A yacht at Pier South can leave the dock and be in the Gulf Stream inside twenty minutes with no bridge to wait for and no shallow channel to feel down. Bimini and the Bahamas bank are around fifty nautical miles east across the Stream, which is a morning run. Fort Lauderdale has no tide worth planning for and no seasonal closure.

Two piers and one bridge

The marina is split by the SE 17th Street Causeway. Pier South carries 37 slips across 2,000 linear feet and has no bridge obstruction between it and the port entrance, which is why the largest and tallest yachts go there. Pier North holds 127 slips across 3,000 linear feet and lies inside the bridge. In total the marina publishes 5,000 linear feet of dockage, 164 deep-water slips and a maximum draft of 30 feet.

The bridge itself is a bascule with 55 feet of vertical clearance at mean high water closed, opening on the hour and half hour from 7am to 7pm. Since February 2026 it stays shut during weekday rush hours, at 7.30, 8.30, 4.30 and 5.30, other than on federal holidays. A yacht with a tall arch or a mast berthed north of it is therefore on a timetable set by Broward County commuters. Owners who care about that book south.

Twenty minutes from the dock to the Gulf Stream, and every trade a yacht could need inside a five-mile radius.

Getting a slip, and what it is priced on

Everything at Pier Sixty-Six is rented. Slips are quoted by the foot per day, with monthly and annual arrangements available and rates rising sharply through the winter and around the boat show. Nothing here is sold or leased in perpetuity in the way a Mediterranean berth can be, although the redevelopment includes private residences whose owners have their own dockage arrangements. An owner takes a slip the way he takes a hotel suite.

Availability follows the season. From late October, when the boat show fills every marina in the county, through to April, South Florida dockage is genuinely tight and the good slips go to repeat customers and to yachts that have committed early. Summer is quiet, cheap and hot. The single hardest week to find anything is boat show week, when a large part of the world fleet is in town.

Power, fuel and the tax angle

Shore power runs from 30 amp domestic service to 1,200 amp per pedestal, which covers the entire fleet the marina accepts. Fresh water, slip-side pumpout, complimentary wifi and parking close to the vessel are standard. Fuelling is done in the slip from high-speed pumps, so a 60 metre yacht bunkers without moving, and the fuel is sold tax free.

Florida's tax treatment is a large part of why so many yachts are based here. State sales and use tax on a vessel purchase runs at 6 per cent but is capped at USD 18,000 under Florida Statute 212.05, so the tax on a USD 40 million yacht is the same as the tax on one at USD 300,000. Florida charges no state income tax. Owners still need proper advice on use tax, delivery and how long the boat sits in state, because the exemptions have conditions and the traps are well documented.

The trades on the doorstep

Fort Lauderdale calls itself the yachting capital of the world and the claim survives examination. Every major broker, management company, crew agency, chandler and specialist contractor keeps an office within a few miles of this dock, and parts that would take a week to reach a Mediterranean marina arrive the same afternoon. For an owner that translates into shorter yard periods and fewer excuses.

For structural work the yards are inland on the New River. Safe Harbor Lauderdale Marine Center covers 65 acres and is described as the largest yacht repair facility in the United States, running five lifts including one rated at 485 tonnes, with covered sheds and a resident contractor base. Derecktor and Bradford also operate locally. The New River route involves several bridges and a pilot, so the transit takes planning.

Security, privacy and the resort above

The marina runs 24-hour security with controlled dock access, concierge service and parking beside the vessel. What it is not is private. Pier Sixty-Six sits on a busy causeway between a public road and a working commercial port, the docks are visible from the bridge and from the restaurants, and Port Everglades is one of the busiest cruise ports in the world, so several very large ships pass close by on a winter Saturday.

The redevelopment has changed the character of the place. Tavistock has spent around USD 1 billion rebuilding the resort, the marina and a set of residences, with the hotel and its rotating rooftop landmark reopening in 2024 and a marina promenade of shops and restaurants added. That brings people. Owners who want anonymity in South Florida keep the yacht on a private residential dock up the New River or on Las Olas Isles.

Ashore, flights and a family week

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International is about ten minutes from the dock and handles both scheduled long-haul and one of the heaviest private jet loads in the United States, with Miami International 40 minutes south as the alternative. That is the shortest airport transfer of any major yachting centre anywhere. Guests arrive and are aboard before the crew have finished the paperwork.

The town itself is a working city with good restaurants, beaches across the road and the Everglades an hour west. For a family the yacht is the point, because the Bahamas are the destination. The Abacos, the Exumas and Eleuthera give a fortnight of clear water and short passages, and clearing into the Bahamas is straightforward. Winter weather in South Florida is dry and warm, with cold fronts every week or two that bring a day of north wind and lumpy Gulf Stream.

Season, storms and the honest downside

The Florida season runs from the boat show at the end of October to Easter. The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show is the largest in-water show in the world and spreads across seven venues including Pier Sixty-Six Marina and the Superyacht Village at Pier Sixty-Six South, with the 67th edition set for 28 October to 1 November 2026. From June to November the Atlantic hurricane season puts South Florida squarely in the box, and most insurance policies impose named-storm plans on yachts that stay.

The downsides are heat, exposure and traffic. August in Fort Lauderdale is brutal and humid, the causeway is loud, and the bridge schedule irritates anyone berthed north of it. This is a place to run a yacht from and not a place to sit and look at a view. Owners choose it because everything they might need is within five miles.

Sixty hertz, and what a European yacht does about it

This is the dock where a Mediterranean yacht arrives after crossing west, and it is one of two pages in this set where the frequency of the shore supply decides whether the boat plugs in at all. Florida runs 60 Hz, at 120 V, 208 V and 480 V depending on the service. A yacht wired for the European 50 Hz standard cannot simply connect. It needs a frequency converter aboard, or a converter supplied at the pedestal, or it runs its generators and pays for the fuel and the hours. Checked on 28 July 2026, Pier Sixty-Six publishes 1,200 A per pedestal and states neither the voltage nor the frequency, which is a strange omission on a marina that markets itself to owners who have never been able to plug in since leaving the shipyard.

The practical sequence is to settle it at the booking and not on the quay. A captain should ask what voltage and frequency the specific pedestal delivers, whether the marina has converters and at what rating, whether the connection above a given amperage is made by the dock team or by the crew, and what the changeover costs. The same question travels the whole American east coast and the Caribbean, so an owner basing a European hull in Florida for a winter usually solves it once, aboard, rather than negotiating it at every marina. On a yacht that arrives without a converter, generator hours become a real line in the winter budget and the maintenance schedule shifts with them.

The federal paperwork, which is not done here

The single most useful thing the marina says about formalities is that they do not happen on its dock. Customs cannot be cleared at Pier Sixty-Six. Arriving vessels take a shuttle the marina arranges to the US Customs office, and US and Canadian nationals have the option of reporting through the Mobile Passport app. That is a materially different arrival from Yacht Haven Grande, where Customs and Border Protection sit on the property, and it needs planning into the first day rather than discovering at the fuel dock. The property itself is a designated Foreign Trade Zone, which is a customs status attaching to goods on the site and not a clearance point for the yacht.

Three federal points shape a European yacht's first Florida winter and none of them are marina matters. Customs and Border Protection issues a cruising licence to recreational vessels of certain flags, which relieves the yacht of formal entry and clearance at each subsequent US port, and eligibility turns on a reciprocity list that CBP maintains and revises, so the flag is checked against the current list rather than assumed. Crew need the correct visa class before arrival, and a B1 or B2 is not automatically the right answer for a paid crew member on a foreign-flagged yacht. Above all, the Passenger Vessel Services Act prohibits a foreign-flagged vessel from carrying passengers for hire between two United States points, which means the Riviera charter model does not transfer to Florida and an owner who assumes it does is exposed. Formally importing a foreign-built hull into the United States attracts duty under the tariff schedule and is a decision taken with an American maritime attorney, not a broker.

Who it is for: The owner splitting the year between Florida and the Bahamas who values trade depth, tax certainty and a ten-minute airport transfer.