Training new yard workers is the "single biggest challenge" for the US refit industry, Joel Shine, chief commercial officer of Derecktor, said at a RefitX panel at FLIBS 2026 on 29 October. The US has 32 active refit yards, about half of them in Florida. According to SuperYacht Times, American yards took 24% of refit visits by yachts over 30 metres in 2025, but only 13% of those by yachts over 60 metres. In that segment Spain led in 2024, according to the Monaco Yacht Show's market report.
In practice
Derecktor, family-owned since 1947, refits yachts at Dania Beach and Fort Pierce in Florida. Shine's worry is that people move. "There's a blessing in having a mobile workforce in the US… but it does present challenges sometimes to individual companies, shipyards, contractors, and to investing and training in someone who, by the next month, may go to work somewhere else," he said. As the kind of "big thinking" he wants, he pointed to $40 million (about €34 million) the US Department of Labor gave Florida in July. Florida runs the money as a nationwide programme paying sponsors of registered apprenticeships in shipbuilding and related trades as apprentices hit set milestones.
Tim Sargent, chief operating officer of Safe Harbor, owner of the Rybovich and Lauderdale Marine Center yards, said the company has moved senior technicians into its own training group. "We've got to teach people about the careers [available], about the opportunities that they have, and then, if they have the right attitude and they want to grow, we can bring them in and we can develop those trades internally," he said. Duncan Smith of Smith Advocacy Group called working waterfronts "critical": land by the water often fetches more as housing than as a yard.
Smith also wants the Maritime Administration (MARAD) to "adjust its thinking" on its Small Shipyard Grants. In August the programme gave about $35 million (about €30 million) to 45 yards, and a yard qualifies through yacht work only for yachts of 100 feet or more. Derecktor got $1 million (about €860,000) for a crane at its yard in Mamaroneck, New York. The only Florida recipient was Gulf Marine Repair, a commercial yard in Tampa.
What is already changing
McKinsey, citing Department of Labor data, puts the need for US ship and boat building, naval yards included, at 200,000 to 250,000 more workers between 2023 and 2033. Nearly all of them would replace people who change careers or leave the workforce; in the private sector new jobs account for only 4,000 to 6,000.
The Marine Industries Association of South Florida (MIASF) runs a two-year Yacht Service Technician apprenticeship, one evening a week on top of a full-time job. Eight apprentices graduated in 2023, two of them from Derecktor's Dania Beach yard, and the third class of nine graduated in 2024.
Why do large American yachts go to Europe for refits?
Derecktor wrote on its blog in March: "Large American yachts routinely cross the Atlantic for significant yard periods in Spain, Italy, France, and Northern Europe. In many cases, this has become the default expectation." The company sees reasons beyond the staff shortage: Europe has clusters of specialist subcontractors, waterfronts subsidised by local governments and cheaper labour around the Mediterranean, and for the past five years it had the exchange rate on its side. Sargent added that European yachts often need technicians from European equipment makers flown in: "if we can't get them over here and they can't work over here, that is friction in the industry."
By number of jobs the US comes first. More than 2,600 yachts over 30 metres went in for refit in 2025, about 18% more than a year earlier. SuperYacht Times' count by country, as published by ICOMIA:
| Country | Refit visits, 2025 |
|---|---|
| USA | 636 |
| Italy | 517 |
| Spain | 418 |
| France | 321 |
| Greece | 245 |
Between 30 and 40 metres the US share is 31%, twice Italy's. Above 60 metres capacity is tight everywhere, according to the Monaco Yacht Show's 2025 market report. Derecktor's 1,500-ton mobile lift at Fort Pierce takes yachts up to 75 metres.
What should an owner planning a US refit expect?
Derecktor's advice is to plan earlier. In June it compared two jobs at Dania Beach. M/Y Carson came in for her 10-year class survey, major engine service and driveline rebuilds, more than 50 work items in all. Scope was fixed months ahead, long-lead parts were on order, the yacht's side had one consistent point of contact, and the work stayed on track. On a 180-foot support vessel the scope kept changing until arrival and several major items were still under discussion when work began. When decisions come late, the company wrote, the yard is "forced into a reactive mode". In the company's words, "no one can recover weeks lost to undefined scope, incomplete planning, and delayed decisions."
"There's inevitably some things that we're not able to see until the drive line is out, and then we have to make some adjustments to the timeline," Benjamin Riddle, a senior project manager at Derecktor Dania Beach, said at the other RefitX panel on 28 October. James Allen of Arrow Monaco advised starting at least six months out, "maybe even a year ahead": "the more planning we have, the better the quality of the quotations, the more the price can be fixed, the less the risk for the owner".
Photo: Maayan Arad / SuperYacht Times; Derecktor. Source: SuperYacht Times, Derecktor Shipyards, US Department of Labor, MARAD, McKinsey, MIASF, ICOMIA, Monaco Yacht Show Market Report 2025.
