Olbia's Molo Brin opens 20 berths at 150m, first yachts 2 August
Twenty berths, and the first boats arrive on Sunday
D-Marin opens Molo Brin to yachts on 2 August, and the first arrivals are booked for that Sunday. The quay has been laid out with 20 berths sized for yachts of 40 to 150 metres, against a maximum draft of 6.5 metres. Four further berths are reserved for service tenders of up to 15 metres, which keeps the support boats off the main wall. Work started in the spring, and the opening has been timed to catch the peak of the season.
The size band matters more than the berth count. A 150-metre limit puts Molo Brin in the small group of Mediterranean quays that can take the largest yachts afloat, and it does so inside a working commercial port rather than at a resort marina. The 6.5-metre draft covers the deep steel hulls that are usually the first to be turned away. Olbia municipality, the Sardinian port authority and the local harbour master worked to a timetable that allowed a summer 2026 opening instead of a 2027 one.
Northern Sardinia was the hole in the map
Olbia sits at the top of the island, minutes from Olbia Costa Smeralda airport and the ferry terminal, and the new quay is in the town itself rather than an hour away by tender. From Molo Brin a yacht is within a short run of the Costa Smeralda, Tavolara, the Maddalena archipelago and the south of Corsica. D-Marin has described its Olbia holding as the third point of a triangle with the French Riviera and mainland Italy, which is a fair account of how August itineraries run. The gap it fills is not cruising water, which Sardinia has never lacked, but a formal place to put a large yacht when the owner wants to be ashore.
That distinction decides how a guest programme works. Guests arriving by private jet can be aboard in minutes rather than transferring across the island. Restaurants and shops are a walk from the passerelle. For an owner who has spent recent Augusts anchored off and shuttling tenders, it is the difference that determines whether the boat gets used in a given week.
What is open now, and what is not
Phase one is a quay, not a finished marina. D-Marin is offering mooring and unmooring assistance, security, surveillance and parking, and access is restricted to yacht owners and their crews while construction continues. The offices, the reception building and the dining space are scheduled for June 2027. The digital layer the group sells elsewhere, the D-Marin app, the smart pedestals and the berth sensors, is to be introduced progressively rather than switched on at the opening.
An owner booking a berth this month should price that honestly. What is on offer in August 2026 is a safe, serviced and unusually well-placed quay with the shoreside still going up around it. Against that, the realistic alternative in the same week is a swinging anchorage or a berth several hours away. June 2027 is the date by which it will be judged.
The Olbia pair, and the fuel dock
Molo Brin does not stand alone. D-Marin acquired it in June together with Marina di Olbia Yacht Service, and the two facilities together offer roughly 270 berths for yachts of up to 150 metres. The acquisition announcement put a 200-metre fuel dock at the centre of the package, able to take up to seven yachts at once and the largest on the northern Sardinian coast. Fuel is one of the few things a 90-metre yacht cannot improvise in high season, and a berth that comes with it is worth more than one that does not.
Andrea De Santis, chief operating officer of D-Marin, credited the work of Gian Pietro Sirca, a board member of the Olbia marina company, with reviving that stretch of waterfront. The framing is worth noting. This is converted working port, not a greenfield marina, and conversion is now the common route to new large-yacht capacity in the Mediterranean.
Berth supply is part of what a yacht is worth
Capacity for yachts over 100 metres has not grown at the rate the fleet has. D-Marin now holds more than 1,000 berths built specifically for superyachts across nine countries, within a network of more than 14,000 berths serving over 50,000 customers a year. Concentration on that scale cuts both ways for an owner. It makes a season easier to plan across several countries on one contract, and it leaves a single operator in a strong position on price.
The practical test is simpler. A yacht that can be berthed near an airport in the week its owner actually wants to use it is worth more, in use and at resale, than one that spends August at anchor off a headland. Twenty berths will not rewrite Mediterranean arithmetic on their own. They do change what is possible in northern Sardinia in the first week of August, which is the week that counts most on that coast.