This week we are in Northern France and we called into see our friend, Florence Vareilles, who is the managing director of Le Havre Naval Projects. Florence has put together a deal with local shipyard and local authorities in France to create a brand-new shipyard/super yacht repair facility. We were lucky enough to have Florence, show us around the fantastic facilities of this project in Le Havre.

You can see from the images the huge size of the dry dock facilities, and in fact, currently there is a small coaster and another vessel in two of the three dry dock facilities. Florence is aiming the business specifically at super yacht operators who find it challenging to get space at dry dock facilities, particularly on the south coast of France, and Le Havre is a convenient port of access for many larger vessels. Florence is specifically targeting larger super yachts in excess of 30 metres. However, the costs, considering the huge scale of the facilities, are not that eye watering. She indicated an approximate cost to dry dock a vessel of around 30 to 50 metres was around €5,000, and then with an ongoing charge of around €1,000 a day. So, to put your super yacht into dry dock for four or five days could cost less than €10,000.

Florence has a whole team of skilled subcontractors available in the Le Havre area who have extensive experience and have cut their teeth on a variety of commercial and leisure vessels. Equally, she welcomes yacht management companies or specific contractors to work at the facility as well. For more information, have a look at Florence’s website here. It was great to see Florence and also spend some time looking at her own personal refit, which involves taking the rig and doing a list of ongoing winter repairs on Florence’s boat, a beautiful Farr 56 that she shares with her husband Romain, and who we have met on numerous occasions while cruising the UK coast and French coast.

Good luck to Florence and we hope to report back on more progress in due course.

From left to right: Romain, Florence and Mandy Chapman from Boatshed.com