A 60 ft motor yacht kept on the Gold Coast costs roughly $70,000 to $80,000 a year sitting at the dock, and $120,000 or more once you use her for a hundred hours. Bigger boats, Sanctuary Cove berthing, agreed-value insurance or a big engine year push that higher. Here is where the money goes, using published 2026 rates wherever one exists.
Key facts — 60 ft motor yacht, Gold Coast, 2026
- Berth — $1,650 to $2,100 a month at the published rates; more at the resort marinas
- Antifoul — every 12 to 18 months; the yard visit is the biggest single maintenance bill
- Insurance — 1% to 3% of insured value a year, so $12,000 to $36,000 on a $1.2 million boat
- Servicing — engines and generator every year, on hours or calendar, whichever comes first
- Registration — $753.60 a year for a 15 to 20 m vessel (2025–26)
- Fuel — about $500 an hour underway at fast cruise, at $2.84 a litre
The short answer
Most owners find the fixed costs are predictable and the variable ones are not. The berth, the insurance and the rego arrive on schedule. The yard visit, the engine service that turns into an injector job, and the fuel bill after a good month on the water are what move the total.
Berthing: the one bill everyone knows about
Only one Gold Coast marina publishes a full rate card: Southport Yacht Club, effective 1 May 2026. Gold Coast City Marina & Shipyard’s last public schedule is from November 2022 and says rates are subject to change. Sanctuary Cove, Marina Mirage, Hope Harbour, Runaway Bay and The Boat Works all quote on enquiry.
| Berth | Southport YC, Gold Member, per month | Southport YC, visitor, per month | GCCM, 2022 schedule, per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 ft / 12 m double | $1,039 | $1,745 | $1,375 (41–50 ft) |
| 49 ft / 15 m double | $1,186 | $1,930 | $1,375 |
| 59 ft / 18 m double | $1,797 | $2,615 | $1,650 (51–60 ft) |
| 59 ft / 18 m single | $2,064 | $3,145 | $1,650 |
| 66 ft / 20 m single | $2,598 | $3,380 | $1,925 (61–70 ft) |
| 73 ft / 22 m single | $3,174 | $4,013 | $2,400 (71–80 ft) |
| 82 ft / 25 m single | $4,122 | $5,500 | $3,200 (81–90 ft) |
A few things the rate card does not shout about:
- Membership matters at Southport. The visitor rate is 40% to 50% above the Gold Member rate. A 12-month contract on a 59 ft single berth is $19,311 for members.
- Power is extra. Southport bills three-phase electricity at 35 cents a kilowatt hour. GCCM lists utilities as extra too.
- Wide and catamaran berths cost 30% to 40% more at Southport; GCCM charges multihulls 1.5 times on a T-head and double in a berth.
- Rates are climbing. Southport’s 59 ft double berth went from $14,139 a year in May 2023 to $16,087 in May 2026, up 13.8% in three years.
- New marinas open at the top of the market. Mantaray Marina at The Spit, opened May 2026, advertises monthly leases from $2,000 and twenty superyacht berths.
- Buying is an option. Freehold berths at Hope Island, next to Sanctuary Cove, list at about $179,000 for 12 m and $320,000 for 18 m, with outgoings of $6,600 to $7,900 a year. Rentals in the same area run $1,050 to $1,300 a month.
The yard: antifouling and everything that goes with it
Warm water fouls hulls fast, and the Gold Coast is named in industry guides as a high-fouling area. Plan on antifouling every 12 to 18 months, or every 12 to 15 months for an aluminium hull.
GCCM’s all-inclusive antifoul package is the clearest published price on the Coast: from $89.50 a foot, including haul-out and relaunch, waterblast, environmental levy, four days on the hardstand, International Micron One or similar, a running-gear check and yard management. It applies to fibreglass monohulls up to 50 ft that were antifouled within the last two years. A 50-footer is therefore about $4,475. Anything larger is a personalised quote. The same package was $69 a foot when it launched in 2020, so it has risen about 30% in six years.
For the antifoul work alone, HF Marine Services at GCCM publishes from $51 a foot for a standard two-coat job and from $86 a foot with a hull cut and polish, excluding the yard’s lift and hardstand, Propspeed, anodes and any fairing.
Before you sign
The per-foot price is never the whole bill. Propspeed on the running gear, new anodes, seacock servicing, a prop polish and any moisture or blister work are quoted separately, and on a 60-footer they add up quickly. Ask for the full scope in writing before she comes out of the water. Our antifouling guide walks through each line.
Insurance
No Australian insurer publishes a rate as a percentage of hull value. The nearest independent figure is that boat insurance in Australia typically costs 1% to 3% of the insured value a year. On a $1.2 million motor yacht that is $12,000 to $36,000. Where you sit in that range depends on the boat’s age, your experience and claims history, where she is kept and whether you insure for agreed or market value.
Queensland has one extra variable: cyclones. Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast attract smaller cyclone loadings than the Whitsundays or Cairns, but most policies still require you to haul out or secure the vessel within a set time once a named cyclone is within a defined distance. Nautilus, for example, applies a named-cyclone excess of $5,000 or 5% of the claim, whichever is greater. Read that clause before you buy, not after.
Servicing the machinery
Engine makers set service intervals on hours or calendar time, whichever comes first. For most leisure boats that means an annual service whether you did 40 hours or 400. Volvo Penta’s D-series has a 250-hour or yearly service (filters, belts, seawater pump, anodes) and a 500-hour or two-yearly service on top; IPS pods add gear oil, drive anodes and diagnostics, and a five-yearly pod service out of the water. Generators run on a similar pattern, with oil at 150 hours or yearly on an Onan and an annual impeller, filter and anode change on a Kohler.
Australian guides put a routine inboard engine service at $1,000 to $5,000 per engine, and unplanned repairs at a further $1,000 to $5,000 a year. Those figures skew small; a twin-engine 60-footer with a generator should allow for the upper end every year and for a much larger bill in a 1,000-hour year, when injectors, aftercoolers and heat exchangers come due. No Australian dealer publishes fixed prices for a Volvo IPS, MAN, MTU or Caterpillar major, so get it quoted early. Seatech Marine at The Boat Works is the authorised Kohler, Onan and Caterpillar dealer on the Coast.
Registration
Queensland registration is one of the cheaper lines. The fee is set in the Transport Operations (Marine Safety) Regulation and indexed each July.
| Vessel length | 2025–26 | From 1 July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Over 10 m to 15 m (33 to 49 ft) | $608.05 | $628.60 |
| Over 15 m to 20 m (49 to 66 ft) | $753.60 | $779.05 |
| Over 20 m (66 ft and up) | $948.25 | $980.25 |
Vessels of 15 m and over have one extra step: any new registration, transfer or change of particulars must be endorsed by Maritime Safety Queensland before a Transport and Main Roads service centre will process it.
Fuel: the cost of actually using her
Marina diesel in south-east Queensland was $2.79 to $2.84 a litre at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron on 3 September 2026, the nearest published pump price to the Gold Coast. Southport Yacht Club gives Gold Members 6 cents a litre off at its 24-hour fuel wharf, and Sanctuary Cove offers bulk pricing on fills over 1,000 litres. Prices moved sharply in late August 2026, so date any figure you rely on.
What a motor yacht burns at cruise, from factory and press sea trials:
| Yacht | Engines | Burn at cruise | Fast cruise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maritimo M55 | Twin Volvo D13-800 | 33 L/h at 10 kn | 176 L/h at 1,900 rpm; 201 L/h at 23 kn |
| Riviera 5400 Sport Yacht | Volvo IPS950 | 180 L/h at 23 kn | |
| Riviera 6000 Sport Yacht | Volvo IPS950 | 187 L/h at 22 kn | 286 L/h at 31 kn |
| Riviera 645 SUV | Twin MAN V12 1,550 hp | 305 L/h at 23 kn | 401 L/h at 28 kn |
At 180 litres an hour and $2.84 a litre, a 55 to 60 ft yacht costs about $510 an hour underway at fast cruise. A hundred hours a year is $51,000, and the generator, running at anchor and overnight, is on top. Drop to displacement speed and the same M55 burns 33 litres an hour; the difference between 10 knots and 23 knots is roughly $420 an hour.
Keeping her clean
Every Gold Coast detailer quotes on request; none publishes a price list. The nearest published Australian rates are a Sydney yard’s: a wash at $4.75 to $5.00 a foot for 41 to 60 ft boats, wax from $3 a foot and a cut and polish at $18 to $20 a foot. On that basis a 60-footer is about $300 a wash and roughly $7,800 a year fortnightly. A full cut and polish is a four-figure job and usually timed with the yard visit.
A worked example: 60 ft, about $1.2 million
Every figure below comes from a published source above, or is flagged as an allowance. Berth is Southport Yacht Club’s 12-month Gold Member rate for a 59 ft single. Insurance is 1.5% of a $1.2 million insured value. Fuel is 100 hours at 180 litres an hour and $2.84 a litre.
| Line | A year | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Berth | $19,311 | SYC 59 ft single, 12-month member rate, May 2026 |
| Shore power | $1,500 | Allowance at 35c/kWh |
| Insurance | $18,000 | 1.5% of $1.2 million |
| Antifoul and yard visit | $10,000 | Allowance for a 60 ft: lift, hardstand, paint, labour, Propspeed, anodes; quote-only above 50 ft |
| Engine and generator servicing | $8,000 | Allowance: twin engines plus generator, routine year |
| Unplanned repairs | $5,000 | Upper end of the published $1,000 to $5,000 range |
| Wash-downs, fortnightly | $7,800 | $5 a foot, Sydney published rate |
| Registration | $754 | Queensland, 15 to 20 m, 2025–26 |
| Safety gear, flares, EPIRB, extinguishers | $1,000 | Allowance |
| At the dock | $71,365 | |
| Fuel, 100 hours | $51,120 | 180 L/h at $2.84 |
| Used 100 hours a year | $122,485 |
That is a used boat in a member berth with a quiet engine year. Move her to a resort marina, insure at the top of the range or hit a 1,000-hour service and you are past $150,000 without trying. It is also why the 10% rule tends to hold: on a new $2.2 million Maritimo M55 or Riviera 6000, 10% is $220,000, and a well-used boat of that size can spend it.
Where the money hides
- The gap between “at the dock” and “in use” is fuel. Decide how much you will really use her before you decide what she costs.
- The yard year. Antifoul is annual-ish, but a pod service, a shaft seal or an aftercooler can double the bill in the year it falls due.
- Member versus visitor. At Southport the difference on a 59 ft single berth is about $13,000 a year.
- Cyclone clauses. Cheaper cover with a haul-out requirement is not cheaper if the yard has no space when a cyclone is named.
- Everything is quote-only above 50 ft. The only way to know is to ask, and to ask for the full scope.
What we do about it
Marine HQ runs the maintenance for motor yachts across the Gold Coast, and the budget is part of that. Every managed yacht has a documented schedule tied to engine hours and calendar dates, so the 500-hour service and the antifoul are booked before they are overdue, and quoted before they are done. Every job card and invoice sits in the owner’s MyYacht app, so what she costs is a number you can look at, not a feeling at the end of the year.
If you are weighing up a purchase or want a straight budget for the boat you already have, call us on 0439 748 387 or email yachtsupport@marinehq.com.au. We will tell you what she needs and what it should cost.