Mediterranean berthing costs

Lots of people want to know the costs of sailing in the Med. Well.. as for your personal budget that’s your call. We met families who cruise on under 250 Euro a week and those who have the means to spend considerably more. We seemed to average about 400 Euros a week.

Location is an important factor. There is no doubt that in our experience Croatia was by far the most expensive place to berth a boat, buy provisions and eat out. We even found that on occasion the markets there were eye wateringly expensive. due to a crew change over once we had to spend 125 euro for one night in the ACI Marina in Split and for that you did not even get water or power!! In Croatia yachties are considered walking ATM’s and its no wonder boats are leaving in droves, which is a shame.

Second for expense was the Tuscan & Amalfi Coast’s of Italy. Reason being there are very little opportunities to Anchor so you are limited to Marinas in all but calmest conditions. These come in at 60-70 Euro a night on the Tuscan coast and a bit more more on the Amalfi coast. Still both a bargain compared to Croatia, but still not cheap if the weather turns nasty and you are forced to seek shelter for a week, or you need to use a marina to pick up crew. Eating out can be done cheaply as can provisioning.

By far the cheapest place to cruise is good old Greece. Cheap and abundant town quays, cheap provisioning and lots of economical eating out options make it the place to sail if you are on a tight budget…your Euros will go a long way! Greece is also good value for getting boat parts and kit. Much cheaper than Croatia or Italy. By way of example we wanted to buy 60m of new 10mm chain. It was 400 Euro in Greece or 1100 Euro in Italy.

We have done a bit of analysis on the costs of mooring over our third season to give you an idea of average costs per night.

During the 2017 Season we were on board for 134 nights, and our nightly situation broke down as follows:

So as you can see, we avoid marinas wherever possible, choosing to Anchor if we can. The next table shows the places we visited, no of nights spent in each area and the total berthing costs. The last column shows the average nightly cost in each location.

For info we have shown an Average berthing cost by month. We were in north west Italy during September and the weather was bad which meant lots of marina time, pushing up the average nightly spend.

After chewing over all the numbers, it turns out that across Season 3, we spent approx. 2260 Euro on berthing, which equates to an average of 17 Euro a night.

Our average marina night this year set us back 55 Euro, so if you are the kind of cruiser that spends every night in a marina your spend would have been nearer 7400 Euro on berthing.

On reflection, we don’t think an average of 17 Euro a night too bad!