How often should an absentee owner's yacht be visited?

Every owner who berths a boat in Spain and lives elsewhere asks this eventually: how often does someone actually need to look at the boat?

The honest answer is "more often than you'd like, less often than the most cautious people on the forum will tell you."

The minimum: once every two weeks

If nothing visits the boat for more than two weeks, three things tend to go wrong:

• A line or fender shifts and you don't know about it
• A bilge or battery problem develops quietly — pumps fail, charger trips, batteries discharge
• A neighbour's boat does something to yours — leaks oil, breaks loose, drops a fender — and no one tells you

Two weeks is the gap at which "small" problems start having time to become bigger problems. Many marinas don't actively monitor individual boats; they monitor the marina.

The sweet spot: weekly in season, fortnightly off-season

For most owners we work with, a weekly visit through summer (May–October) and a fortnightly visit through winter is the right balance.

In season: more weather, more heat, more dust, more boats moving around in busy marinas, more chance of a knock or a chafed line. A weekly walk-round catches things early.

Off-season: quieter marinas, fewer neighbours, but more storms. Fortnightly is enough most of the time, with extra visits scheduled before and after named weather events.

What a "visit" actually needs to cover

It's not enough to just look. A useful visit is:

• A walk round the deck — lines, fenders, anything new
• Open the boat, sniff for fuel, gas, damp, mould
• Eyeball the bilge, batteries, shore power
• A quick pump and engine-bay check
• Photos of anything notable (good or bad) sent to the owner

Ten to fifteen minutes, done properly, every time. The value isn't in the time spent — it's in the cadence and the photo record.

When weekly isn't enough

There are times when even weekly visits aren't the right answer:

• Before and after a named storm — extra visit, regardless of schedule
• After a calima — a rinse-down sooner is much better than later
• If the boat is for sale and showings are happening — needs to be presentable on demand
• If a contractor (engineer, sailmaker, surveyor) is attending — someone should let them on and check what they did

When monthly is fine

If the boat is on the hard for the winter, properly winterised, covered, with batteries off — monthly is usually fine. A boat in the water with systems live is a different animal.

The honest reason most owners under-visit

It's not laziness. It's that asking a marina-mate to "have a look" feels awkward to do every two weeks, and there's no good system for it. So owners settle for "I'll check it when I'm out next" and then arrive to a long list of things that have been wrong for months.

A standing arrangement with someone who's paid to do it solves that, because the awkwardness goes away. That's the whole job, really.

If you'd like to set up regular visits at one of the marinas we cover, drop us a message.