Florida’s billionaire yacht owners are competing for docking space

Miami and its nearby coastal enclaves are fast becoming the staging ground for Silicon Valley’s grandest displays of wealth, and the showmanship is extending from seaside mansions to hulking yacht berths. 

Over the past few years, billionaires like Brin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have shown off increasingly extravagant multi-deck megayachts, some as big as small cruise ships. The Dragonfly—with its movie theater, beauty salon, and multiple helicopter pads—is rumored to be worth some $450 million. Bezos has a 417-foot skiff called Koru that reportedly cost more than $500 million. And the Breakthrough—which one commentator referred to as a “modern engineering marvel”—was reportedly commissioned by Bill Gates and up for sale last year for $645 million.

But now those floating palaces are running into a hard limit where billionaire wealth is of little help: dock space.

Miami offers several deep-water berths that can accommodate larger vessels, including docking areas specifically designed to welcome superyachts. Island Gardens Deep Harbor, for instance, can host vessels up to 550 feet and provides amenities including access to a marina lounge. Some marinas have even undergone sweeping renovations, including a $40 million one in Palm Beach in 2022. 

But with a recent surge of new billionaire residents moving from up north and out west, South Florida’s bays are bursting at the seams. 

In some marinas, yacht owners pay as much as $500,000 a year just to have access to docking space. Less-than-neighborly disputes have led to legal fights over permitting worth hundreds of billions of dollars. When Bezos first tried to dock his megayacht in Port Everglades, around 30 miles north of Miami’s port, he was turned away because his vessel was too large and there weren’t enough available berths. Instead, Koru had to slum it next to oil tankers and large shipping vessels in the city’s container port.

That scarcity could worsen as more billionaires flock to Florida. The Sunshine State has been a magnet for the ultra-wealthy, especially the opulent residential belt that stretches north of Miami. Famously home to Mar-a-Lago and President Donald Trump’s weekend getaway, more and more Silicon Valley types and Wall Street bigwigs have bought up property in the area over the past couple of years for proximity to the president—and to save on taxes. 

California’s proposed billionaire wealth tax, which will be voted on in November, has also prompted big earners to seek new shores. Meta CEO and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has reportedly purchased a home in the so-called “billionaire bunker,” also home to Bezos and NFL legend Tom Brady. 

The scarcity of yacht berths for Florida’s nouveau riche might be spawning business opportunities, however. In November, Citadel founder and three-year Florida resident Ken Griffin won approval to build a private yacht marina in Miami Beach. The space will reportedly accommodate nine vessels, and includes office space, an art gallery, and a “special events” space to host as many as 300 people. 

Why build a custom-designed private marina? Griffin’s own 308-foot superyacht reportedly doesn’t fit at his nearby mansion’s dock.