Proposal for a new yacht yard

Just lately I had the experience of helping my son refurbish his yacht at Peaks Yacht Yard, Chaguaramas, Trinidad. Malta lacks the facilities for the repairing and dry berthing of sailing and power yachts.

Manoel Island yacht yard is very small and it is in an area that does not offer expansion. Hence the need to have another yacht service yard and a nearby marina, to cater especially for sailing yachts.

My son, now based in the Caribbean for the last five years, has knowledge of these yards all over the place and we both see the need to build another yard in Malta for the ever increasing number of yachts. We must compete with our Sicilian neighbours and we must hold on to our business here. Such a project would generate much work and new jobs for technical and non technical people.

This would entail a space big enough to provide dry berthing and the building of the nesessary service shops, such as ship carpentry, welding, propeller repair, rigging, engineering repair and ironmongery supply shops as well as a restaurant and accommodation.

Such a project does not need a lot of infrastructure but can easily be started if some European money is made available.

Now Malta being small, it seems that the venue for such an enterprise is nowhere to be found. However, an ideal place would surely be the peninsula at the Qalet Marku Tower at Bahar-ic-Caghaq which could be complemented by the building of a large marina with reclaimed land and another penisula/breakwater built in front of Ghallis Tower on the other side, to enclose the whole area. The breakwaters would have to be built strong enough to shelter the boats from the waves generated by our grigal winds.

The sea around there is not very deep and some land reclamation would have to be carried out.

At least a feasable study must start in order to set the ball rolling for such an enterprise.