New Hong Kong marina adds much needed capacity

Hong Kong has been short on berthing capacity for private vessels for a number of years. According to the Government’s Marine Department (MarDep), there are over 10,000 registered private leisure vessels competing for only around 5,000 public and private moorings. Up to 600 new fore-and-aft mooring spaces are now available in Hong Kong’s Hei Ling Chau in the form of the newly created Delta Marina. Founded by Bart Kimman, Hong Kong yacht owners and visiting superyachts will have new mooring options in a previously underused typhoon shelter. The new marina is 15 minutes by boat from Aberdeen, Hong Kong.

“Hei Ling Chau typhoon shelter is a great facility just begging to be used”, says Bart Kimman of Delta Marina and Express Service Ltd. “We are offering a seamless end-to-end service that includes assistance with the acquisition of a proper legal mooring in a Government Typhoon Shelter, followed up by a service package to look after your boat that includes security, water, limited electricity, grey and black water pump-out, mooring inspection, typhoon preparation, and assistance with on-site servicing, maintenance and repairs.”

MarDep had recently proposed additional mooring facilities in a number of locations, the biggest of which is the typhoon shelter at Hei Ling Chau (now Delta Marina). While this location had been proposed by the authorities on many occasions as a means of alleviating mooring capacity issues in Hong Kong, proposals had been resoundingly dismissed by the boating community on account of the poor accessibility and lack of primary services.

According to Kimman, convenience is everything in Hong Kong, hence the lack of support for Hei Ling Chau. However, with the addition of Delta Marina’s fast limousine ferry, a purpose-built 18 passenger tender that cruises at 24 knots, the marina is 15 minutes from Aberdeen, eight minutes from Discovery Bay and three minutes from Mui Wo. “Speed annihilates distance. Very shortly, we’ll be running some complimentary media trips to prove the point,” comments Kimman.

Delta Marina can also provide interior/exterior cleaning services, catering and provisioning services, dinghy and tender hire, water toy hire, and professional captain and crew hire.

“It really is a one-stop-shop arrangement. We’ll get you onto a mooring, look after your boat like it’s our own, get it ready to use, put a crew on board, tidy it up afterwards, and handle all those annoying things like annual surveys, inspections, and licensing requirements. Call it a Yacht Concierge Service,” continues Kimman.

Rather than operating a fixed berthing model, by creating a fore-and-aft mooring model, Delta Marina is able to adapt its marina to meet demand. Importantly, however, in light of Hong Kong’s limited capacity to welcome large superyachts, Delta Marina will be able to moor vessels up to 75m.

In the recently published The Pacific Superyacht Report (issue 207), we explore Asian superyacht buyer dynamics, with a particular focus on Hong Kong. One of the pervading findings was that, in the event of local infrastructure developments creating larger berthing options, domestic UHNWIs would purchase larger superyachts. However, given the usage models typically operated in Hong Kong, namely day and weekend boating, it is unlikely that local buyers would keep vessels larger than 45m in domestic waters.

“Typically, anything owned by the Hong Kong entrepreneurs above 500gt has been kept in Europe...[However] ownership of sub-500gt yachts simply makes sense for the domestic market. Unlike the Mediterranean, where large yacht usage usually entails spending a week or longer on board and visiting a number of locations, yachts that are kept in Hong Kong are commonly used as day boats. However, there are suggestions that this model may be changing and that the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened this next stage of the superyacht evolution,” reads The Pacific Superyacht Report.

With Delta Marina providing flexible capacity, there is greater scope for domestic owners to buy superyachts at the larger end of the practical local scale (45m), as well as providing a practical place for foreign superyacht visitors with vessels that may struggle to find space within Hong Kong's most renowned marinas.

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