Aerial view of a mangrove-fringed Caribbean hurricane hole in bright daylight, with cruising yachts anchored inside the sheltered basin and deep open water alongside

Storm-season directory

Caribbean Hurricane Holes and Haul-Out Yards: 180 Places, Sourced

This directory lists 180 Atlantic-basin storm refuges and haul-out yards, 103 yards and 83 refuges, each with coordinates, a source URL and a verification date. It is filtered by the attributes a named-windstorm hurricane plan turns on rather than by scenery. Coverage is uneven and published as such: 25 of 103 yards state a verified lift capacity, and not one states a maximum displacement.

World Yacht Insurance compiled this directory for owners who have to name a storm destination in writing before a season starts. Nothing on this page is endorsed by an underwriter.

Browse all 180 places What the list is filtered on

Last updated 18 September 2026. Facts last verified 18 September 2026.

Six figures from this directory

180

Atlantic-basin places listed, 103 haul-out yards and 83 storm refuges

World Yacht Insurance, hurricane-refuges.json, 2026

0 of 103

Haul-out yards that publish a maximum displacement

World Yacht Insurance, 2026

25 of 103

Haul-out yards that publish a verified lift capacity

World Yacht Insurance, 2026

15 May 2026

Application deadline for Hurricane Hole storm-mooring permits at Virgin Islands National Park

National Park Service, 2026

60 feet

Maximum vessel length the Hurricane Hole storm-refuge mooring system is designed for

National Park Service, page last updated 2018

139 shipwrecks

Cleared from Simpson Bay Lagoon after Hurricane Irma

World Bank, 2024

The definition

What is a hurricane hole, and what does a directory of them give you?

A hurricane hole is a sheltered anchorage with a narrow entrance, high surrounding ground and mangroves to tie into, where a boat is left or secured during a tropical cyclone. A haul-out yard is the alternative on land. This directory lists 180 of both across the Atlantic basin, each with coordinates, a source URL and a verification date.

The two options fail in different ways. Afloat, the risks are crowding, dragging and other people's boats. Ashore, they are toppling, stand failure and fire. Neither is a category your policy recognises by name.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November (National Hurricane Center). That window is when the choice on this page matters. An owner's planning runs earlier still, because the access deadlines in the permits section fall before the season opens.

A hurricane hole is not an insurance category. On the policy wording we hold, "Named Windstorm" is defined by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration naming, with no geography in the definition at all, and navigational limits are "only all waters as limited and shown in the Schedule or amended by endorsement". Where the boat sits is a fact about your plan and your Schedule, not a label the market applies to a bay.

If you are planning a season in the region, cruising the Caribbean through hurricane season covers the calendar side of that decision.

What this means for owners: A bay's reputation carries no contractual weight. What carries weight is the destination written into a plan your underwriters have agreed, and the limits printed on your own Schedule.

The count

How many storm refuges and haul-out yards are in this directory, and where?

The directory holds 180 Atlantic-basin places: 103 haul-out yards and 83 storm refuges, with 6 facilities carrying both roles. By area, 98 are in the Caribbean, 66 on the US East Coast and in Florida, 11 in the southwest Caribbean and Central America, and 5 on the US Gulf. The underlying dataset holds 235 rows in total.

The other 55 rows sit outside the Atlantic basin and are deliberately excluded from this page: 23 in the Pacific, 18 in the Eastern Mediterranean, 4 in Southeast Asia, 2 in the Western Mediterranean, 2 in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, 1 in Northern Europe and 5 elsewhere. The plan generator uses them, so they stay in the file. This page is scoped to the Atlantic basin, so they stay off it.

By country, the in-scope rows run: United States 71, Puerto Rico 13, Grenada 11, British Virgin Islands 10, Antigua and Barbuda 8, Bahamas 8, Trinidad and Tobago 7, Dominican Republic 6, Guadeloupe 6, Colombia 5, Sint Maarten 4, Cuba 3, Saint Lucia 3, Saint Martin 3, Honduras 3, Jamaica 2, the Cayman Islands 2, Martinique 2 and the US Virgin Islands 2, then single figures across Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, Curacao, Haiti, Saint Kitts, Turks and Caicos, Saint Vincent, Belize, Guatemala and Panama.

Two of those clusters have their own rules worth reading before you commit to them: the 8 Bahamian rows sit under the entry requirements set out in taking your boat to the Bahamas, and the 66 US East Coast and Florida rows sit in a state with its own Florida boat-insurance requirements.

Place names and coordinates for the spine of this file are derived from the noForeignLand community map, August 2026. Attributes are sourced per row, as the next section explains.

What this means for owners: The geographic reach is a statement about what has been checked, not a claim of completeness. A harbour absent from this list has not been rejected; it has not been sourced.

The fields

How to read a row: what each field means and where it came from

Every row carries a name, a country, latitude and longitude to five decimal places, an area, one or more roles, a source URL and a last_verified date. Beyond that, each row can carry up to seven physical attributes: lift capacity in tonnes, boats-ashore capacity, maximum length overall, maximum beam, maximum draft, maximum displacement, and a strap-or-pin answer covering welded single-piece stands and anchored tie-downs. Most rows carry none of them.

Two of those fields get confused constantly, so the directory keeps them apart and so should you. Boats-ashore capacity is how many boats a yard can hold. Lift capacity is what its travelift can pick up. Neither substitutes for the other. Caribbean Compass records that Spice Island Marine in Grenada holds about 240 boats and lifts 70 tonnes: two different numbers about two different constraints, and conflating them produces a yard that exists nowhere.

"unknown" is a real value in this file and it appears far more often than a number does. Guessing is the failure mode on a storm-planning page, so a field with no source stays empty instead of being filled from a community record. Community-supplied figures are held separately as candidates to check, never published as verified.

Where a row's sources conflict, the row carries a conflict field naming both values and both sources. The "where sources disagree" section below works through the live examples.

Why the directory filters on area, not region

The dataset carries two geographic classifiers. region is an engineering field copied from the code that routes our hurricane-plan form, and its bounds overlap, so 49 rows carry a region label that does not match where they actually are. area is the truthful one. Every filter and every label on this directory reads area. We have published the defect instead of quietly correcting one file and leaving the other wrong. The region bounds are engineering bounds in any case. They are not a policy boundary and must never be read as one.

The directory

Browse all 180 places

Every row below carries the fields the previous section names: name, area, country, coordinates, roles, whichever physical attributes are sourced, the source and the date it was last verified. Filter by area or role, or search by name or country. Selecting a place pre-fills it as the destination in the hurricane plan generator.

Search by name or country

Area

Role

Only places with published capacity data27 of 180

Showing the first 15 of 180

Most rows are a sourced name and position and nothing else. That is the real state of what yards publish, not a gap hidden here: 27 of the 180 places carry a lift capacity, a beam, a length limit or a stands-and-tie-downs answer.

The coverage rate

Which attributes does a hurricane plan turn on, and how many yards publish them?

Of the 103 haul-out yards in this directory, 25 publish a verified lift capacity, 19 a strap-or-pin answer, 16 a maximum beam, 11 a boats-ashore capacity, 9 a maximum length overall, 6 a mast-removal option, and 0 a maximum displacement. The attributes a storm plan actually turns on are the ones fewest yards print.

Attribute coverage across 103 Caribbean and US East Coast haul-out yards (World Yacht Insurance, September 2026)
Attribute	Yards publishing it	Why a storm plan turns on it
Verified lift capacity (tonnes)	25 of 103	Sets whether the yard's gear can pick your boat up at all
Strap-or-pin answer (welded single-piece stands, anchored tie-downs)	19 of 103	The securing detail a plan has to describe once the boat is ashore
Maximum beam	16 of 103	Beam, not length, is what usually stops a travelift
Boats-ashore capacity	11 of 103	Decides whether the space you named is available in August
Maximum length overall	9 of 103	The first filter most owners apply, and the least binding
Mast removal available	6 of 103	Windage ashore, and a separate cost and lead time
Maximum displacement	0 of 103	The weight a capacity assessment turns on, published by nobody

Source: World Yacht Insurance directory of 180 Atlantic-basin storm refuges and haul-out yards, compiled September 2026. Attributes for 19 of the Caribbean yards are drawn from the Caribbean Compass hauling-out guide, a 23-yard, 13-column comparison table updated 3 March 2026, and are attributed to Compass row by row.

That zero is not a criticism of the yards. A lift rated at 70 tonnes tells you what the machine can pick up. A displacement figure tells you what your boat weighs. An underwriter's capacity condition asks the second question, and yards go on lifting boats safely every week without ever printing the answer to it.

What this means for owners: You will usually have to ask. Write to the yard for the displacement it will accept and the stand type it uses, and keep the reply. A dated email answering a question no website answers is worth more in a plan than a screenshot of a services page.

The wording

Does hauling out at a yard change what your policy covers?

Yes, in four ways on the wording we hold. Ashore, theft cover narrows to the entire vessel from a locked building or an approved storage place; Medical Payments excludes injury during haul-out and launch; hull cover excludes overland transport beyond 150 miles; and a signed hurricane plan agreed in advance is a condition precedent to named-windstorm cover.

Each sits in a named part of the wording, and a clause quoted outside its own section stops being true. So each one below carries its scope with it.

Theft, while the vessel is stored on land. Cover is restricted to theft of the entire vessel including its equipment, from a locked building or from another storage place the insurer has approved in writing. An open compound with no written approval therefore changes what theft cover actually reaches.
Medical Payments. This section excludes anyone injured or killed while the vessel is being transported, hauled out or launched, or while it is under repair. That exclusion sits in the Medical Payments section and nowhere else. It is not a third-party liability exclusion, and anyone telling you your liability cover switches off at the travelift is reading the wrong clause.
Hull cover and overland transport. Damage sustained while the vessel is transported overland more than 150 miles from its customary place of storage, as advised to the insurer, is excluded. Trucking a boat inland to a cheaper yard can cross that line without anyone mentioning it.
The hurricane plan itself. A signed and dated hurricane plan agreed by underwriters before cover is granted is a condition precedent to liability for named-windstorm cover. Not a discount, not a document you file afterwards.

What the yard publishes against what the wording asks for (World Yacht Insurance, September 2026)
What the yard publishes	What the wording asks for	Where that sits in the policy
Lift capacity in tonnes	Nothing. The rating describes the machine	n/a
Boats-ashore capacity	Nothing directly, but it decides whether the space you named exists in August	n/a
Maximum displacement (0 of 103 publish it)	The weight behind a capacity assessment	n/a
Welded single-piece stands, anchored tie-downs	The securing arrangement a plan sets out, and the plan is a condition precedent	Hurricane Plan clause
A locked compound, and written approval of the storage place	Theft ashore is restricted to the entire vessel from a locked building or a place approved in writing	Theft provisions
Haul-out and launch service	Excludes anyone injured or killed during transport, haul-out, launch or repair. Medical Payments only	Exclusions to Medical Payments
Transport to an inland storage compound	Excludes hull damage in overland transport beyond 150 miles from the customary place of storage	Exclusions to Hull cover

Source: London Marine Insurance Services Ltd private-yacht policy wording and clause schedule, held on file by World Yacht Insurance. Clauses are cited by name and section; the document is not published.

A named-windstorm loss carries a deductible of 10% of the hull value shown in the schedule, and it applies to all claims including actual, constructive and compromised total loss. Choosing a cheaper refuge does not buy a smaller deductible; how the named-windstorm deductible works sets that out in full, and what a yacht policy does not cover covers the exclusions around it.

These are the terms on the wording our chain places business on. Other policies differ, sometimes sharply, and your Confirmation of Cover decides. For the criteria behind acceptance rather than the places themselves, see which hurricane holes insurers accept, and the criteria behind it.

All of that assumes hauling out is the decision you have already made. If it is still open, the three options compared by what each one does to your cover sets hauling out beside staying afloat and leaving the belt entirely. And for the other document in play once the boat is ashore, the yard's own storage agreement, see what a boatyard's storage contract does to your own cover.

The permit test

Can you get in? The permit and booking test, using Hurricane Hole, St John

Not automatically. The best-known hurricane hole in the Caribbean is not an anchorage you sail into. It is a permitted mooring inside a federal national monument. For 2026, applications had to reach Virgin Islands National Park by 15 May, and a drawing for all unassigned berths was held on 22 May at 5:30 p.m.

Hurricane Hole lies inside the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument, established on 17 January 2001 by Presidential Proclamation 7399 and covering 12,708 marine acres. The two National Park Service pages carrying the monument and mooring detail were last updated in 2016 and 2018 respectively; the permit calendar below is current for 2026. Inside it, the National Park Service states that "the Secretary of the Interior prohibits all boat anchoring, except for emergency or authorized administrative purposes". The storm-refuge mooring system there is "designed for berthing vessels up to 60 feet in length", so a 62-foot boat is outside the system regardless of how early the owner applies.

The 2026 sequence, from the park's own announcement, ran like this:

The 2026 Hurricane Hole permit sequence, against the Atlantic hurricane season
Date	What happened
15 May 2026	Deadline for Special Use Permit applications to reach Virgin Islands National Park
22 May 2026, 5:30 p.m.	Virtual drawing for all berths not retained by 2025 permit holders
1 June 2026	Atlantic hurricane season opens (National Hurricane Center)
30 November 2026	Atlantic hurricane season closes (National Hurricane Center)

The permit deadline falls more than two weeks before the season starts, and well before the dates most policies move on. An owner who decides in July that Hurricane Hole is the answer has already missed it by eight weeks.

That is a park rule, not an insurance requirement, and conflating the two is exactly the error this page exists to correct. The transferable part is simpler. Chosen is not booked. Capacity fills, permits close, and a plan naming a destination you cannot get into is a plan with a hole in it. Ask the same question of every row here, whether the gate is a federal drawing or a yard manager's August waiting list.

The conflicts

Where the sources disagree, and why we publish both numbers

Seven rows in this dataset carry an unresolved conflict. Three of them show how a wrong number travels.

Antigua Slipway. The Caribbean Compass comparison table records a 270-ton marine railway. The prose on the same page says 200 tons. One source contradicts itself, the contradiction was still live on 18 September 2026, and the yard published no figure of its own. The row therefore states the range, 200 to 270 tons, and picks neither. Averaging them would invent a 235-ton railway that nobody has ever claimed exists.

Time Out Boat Yard, Saint Martin. The widely-copied 65-ton figure is the crane. Compass's prose is explicit that the yard "hauls boats up to 18 tons, using a 65-ton crane", so 18 tonnes is the vessel limit and 65 describes the lifting gear. Both the community map and the press table carried the crane number. Two sources agreeing is not verification when both copied the same one. Recording the crane rating as haul-out capacity would have overstated the yard by a factor of 3.6.

Simpson Bay Lagoon, Sint Maarten. Noonsite describes an enclosed lagoon, reached through narrow bridge channels, with calm water and good anchoring, a place long treated as a storm refuge. The World Bank describes what happened when the test came: after Hurricane Irma, "the result was 139 shipwrecks that needed to be cleared". Both records stand in the row and neither is preferred, because both are true and only one of them is a reputation.

The rule that produced those decisions is short. A yard's own site outranks the marine press; the marine press outranks a community record; a community record is a candidate to check and never a published value. Conflicting figures ship as a conflict and are never averaged.

Some yards claim on their own websites to be acceptable to insurers. That claim sits in the row's notes as marketing and goes no further. No underwriter is named in any such claim, and the field recording whether a facility satisfies a plan stays unknown.

The alternative

Does sailing south instead of hauling out solve it?

Partly, and it swaps one set of terms for another. Trinidad, Grenada and the southwest Caribbean sit south of most storm tracks, but 9 of the rows in this directory lie in waters the policy wording treats specially: 5 in Colombia, 3 in Cuba and 1 in Haiti. Cover is placeable there, on modified terms.

Southern storm-season options, by country, and what changes in the wording (World Yacht Insurance, September 2026)
Southern option	Rows here	What changes in the wording
Grenada and Carriacou	11	Nothing in the four-country clause. See the Beryl note below
Trinidad	7	Nothing in the four-country clause
Colombia (Cartagena, Santa Marta, Barranquilla)	5	Four-country terms apply in full
Cuba	3	Four-country terms apply in full
Haiti	1	Four-country terms apply in full
Honduras (Roatan, La Ceiba, Utila)	3	Nothing in the four-country clause
Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao	3	Nothing in the four-country clause
Panama (Shelter Bay) and Guatemala (Rio Dulce)	2	Nothing in the four-country clause

Source: World Yacht Insurance directory, September 2026, counted by country across the 180 in-scope rows. Terms from the London Marine Insurance Services Ltd clause schedule, "Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti Exclusions and Warranties", held on file.

The four-country clause covers Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti, and it modifies the terms in four ways instead of refusing the risk:

All deductibles are doubled while the vessel is in Cuban, Colombian, Venezuelan or Haitian waters.
Confiscation by any authority is excluded.
Piracy of, and the taking of, the insured vessel is excluded.
Theft is excluded absolutely, unless the vessel is moored in a commercial marina previously agreed in writing by underwriters.

The market gets this one wrong in both directions. The clause does not exclude those countries. It places them on modified terms, and the theft carve-out has a route through it: a commercial marina, agreed in writing, in advance. Cartagena and Santa Marta are on this list with their marinas named, so a Colombian season is a planning problem and not a closed door. Caribbean yacht insurance sets out how that is arranged.

On Grenada. Caribbean Compass reports that some insurers which previously allowed storage in Grenada may no longer do so after Hurricane Beryl. That is Compass's market report, it names no insurer and carries no date of change, and we pass it on attributed rather than adopting it. Your own Schedule is what binds you.

On the latitude story. The German marine title float magazin states that insurance "often excludes named storms between 10 and 30 degrees north". That is a widely repeated belief and it does not describe the wording we hold. On our chain's policy, "Named Windstorm" is defined by NOAA naming, with no latitude band anywhere in the definition, and navigational limits are "only all waters as limited and shown in the Schedule or amended by endorsement". The meteorological belt is a fair description of where storms form; it is not how the peril is written into a policy. The full working is in which hurricane holes insurers accept, and the criteria behind it.

The limits

What this directory does not tell you

Six things, stated flatly. A hurricane hole is not a guarantee; no facility here is approved by anyone; most rows carry a name and coordinates and nothing more; non-Atlantic rows are excluded; the deductible does not move with geography; and your Confirmation of Cover, not this page, decides what you are covered for.

No row on this page is approved by an underwriter. The field recording whether a facility satisfies a hurricane plan reads unknown on all 235 rows in the dataset, every single one, and it can only change when a named underwriter says otherwise. A yard's own marketing is not that.

A refuge is not protection. Cruising World has quoted Don Street's judgment after Hurricane Hugo that there is no such thing as a hurricane hole in the Eastern Caribbean any more, because they are all too crowded. The same feature reports that more than 130 of roughly 200 boats in Ensenada Honda, Culebra were destroyed by Hugo in 1989; we pass that figure on as Cruising World's, since the underlying National Hurricane Center report is an image-only scan we could not check against. For scale, the National Hurricane Center's Saffir-Simpson scale starts Category 1 at 74 mph and puts the floor of Category 5 at 157 mph. Between 1980 and 2025, 336 named storms crossed the Caribbean box across 46 seasons, an average of 7.3 a year (IBTrACS v04r01, DOI 10.25921/82ty-9e16).

The deductible travels with the boat, not the bay. The named-windstorm deductible on our chain's wording is 10% of the hull value in the schedule and it applies to total losses as well as partial ones. Moving the boat 200 miles south does not change that figure.

Coverage is thin by design, not by neglect. The attributes named earlier are not in any community dataset and have to be sourced yard by yard, which is why most rows carry geography and nothing else. We would rather publish an empty field than a plausible guess.

This page is general information about how storm destinations interact with yacht-insurance wording. It is not financial advice and it is not a recommendation of any facility. World Yacht Insurance is an introducer: we are not an insurer and we carry no risk.

The next step

From a chosen refuge to a hurricane plan an underwriter will read

Choosing a destination is where the document starts. On the wording we hold, a signed and dated hurricane plan agreed by underwriters before cover is granted is a condition precedent to named-windstorm cover, so the plan sits upstream of the booking. Selecting a row in this directory pre-fills the destination in our plan generator.

First-hand

Owners kept asking us what a hurricane plan is actually supposed to contain, so rather than leave them guessing at the format, we built the generator that writes one and we send it in with the submission.

Costas Matheou · Licensed insurance agent (Cyprus)

A destination on its own is not a plan. Underwriters read for three further things, and this directory answers none of them for you:

Who will be there. Name the person who will secure or move the boat, and say whether they are authorised to act without reaching you.
Whether the space is booked. A yard you have chosen and a yard that has confirmed a slot for August are different facts. The permit section above shows what happens when the difference is a federal drawing.
What happens ashore. Stand type, tie-downs, mast removal, and who checks the boat during the season.

When you have those, build the hurricane plan this destination goes into, then send it to whoever is placing your cover so it goes in with the submission instead of after it.

World Yacht Insurance is a yacht-insurance introducer arranging hull and liability cover up to $5M for sail and motor yachts worldwide, including the Caribbean, placed in the London market through London Marine Insurance Services Ltd, a Lloyd's-accredited broker. Cover for a Caribbean season is quoted off the same wording cited on this page. If you want terms for a named destination, tell us the yard or the bay and we will quote against it.

How cover is arranged sets out the full chain, and owners based in Florida can start from Florida yacht insurance.

The method

Methodology

How the rows were built. Place names, coordinates, country codes and categories come from the noForeignLand community map, read through its public API in August 2026, used as a spine of facts only. No description, review, username or photograph from that map appears in this file. Attributes were then sourced per yard, each with a URL and a retrieval date recorded in the row.

The source hierarchy. Tier 1 is the yard's or facility's own website, and it outranks everything. Tier 2 is an institutional source such as the World Bank or a government agency. Tier 3 is the marine press, chiefly the Caribbean Compass hauling-out guide, which supplied attributes for 19 Caribbean yards. Tier 5 is a community record, which is a candidate value to check and is never published as verified. Where tiers conflict, the higher tier wins and the disagreement stays recorded. Where two sources of the same tier conflict, both figures are published and neither is chosen.

What "unknown" means. It means nothing has been sourced, not that the answer is no. The field recording whether a facility satisfies a hurricane plan reads unknown on all 235 rows and will only change if a named underwriter says otherwise.

Why 55 rows are excluded. The file covers more than the Atlantic. Rows in the Pacific, the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and Northern Europe are held for the plan generator and left off this page, which is scoped to the Atlantic basin: the Caribbean, the southwest Caribbean and Central America, the US East Coast and Florida, and the US Gulf.

Corrections. If you run or know a facility on this list and a figure is wrong, send the page on your own site that states the correct number. A tier 1 source replaces anything below it, and the row's verification date moves with it.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What is a hurricane hole?+

A hurricane hole is a sheltered anchorage with a narrow entrance, high surrounding ground and mangroves to tie into, where a boat is secured during a tropical cyclone. It is a geographic description, not an insurance category, and it is not a guarantee: named hurricane holes have been destroyed with boats inside them.

Do you need a permit to use Hurricane Hole in St John?+

Yes. Hurricane Hole lies inside the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument, where the National Park Service states that the Secretary of the Interior prohibits all boat anchoring except for emergency or authorised administrative purposes. 2026 applications were due at Virgin Islands National Park by 15 May, on a Special Use Permit form with fees waived. Berths not retained by 2025 permit holders went to a virtual drawing on 22 May 2026 at 5:30 p.m. The storm-refuge mooring system is designed for vessels up to 60 feet in length.

Is a hurricane hole better than hauling out?+

Neither is safer in general; they fail differently. Afloat, the risks are crowding, dragging and other boats. Ashore, they are toppling, stand failure and fire. The honest answer is per boat and per plan, which is why this directory lists 103 haul-out yards and 83 storm refuges without ranking one against the other.

Does my insurance require me to haul out?+

Not on the wording we hold. It names no destination and draws no geographic box. What it does require is a signed and dated hurricane plan agreed by underwriters before named-windstorm cover is granted, and your navigational limits sit on your Schedule. Other policies differ, so read your own Confirmation of Cover.

Is Grenada still acceptable after Hurricane Beryl?+

Caribbean Compass reports that some insurers which previously allowed storage in Grenada may no longer do so after Beryl. That is Compass's market report rather than our position, it names no insurer, and we have not adopted it. What binds you is the navigational limit on your own Schedule, which is the document to check before booking a Grenadian season.

What happens to my cover if I sail to Cartagena instead?+

Colombia is one of four countries the wording treats specially, alongside Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti. Cover is placeable there on modified terms: all deductibles are doubled while in those waters, confiscation by any authority is excluded, piracy of, and the taking of, the vessel is excluded, and theft is excluded unless the vessel is moored in a commercial marina previously agreed in writing by underwriters.

Is my gear covered against theft while the boat is on the hard?+

Generally not on its own. While the vessel is stored on land, theft cover on the wording we hold is restricted to theft of the entire vessel including its equipment, from a locked building or another storage place approved in writing by the insurer. The compound you choose is therefore a cover question as well as a price question.

Sources

National Park Service, Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument: monument overview and management and mooring system
National Park Service, Virgin Islands National Park: 2026 Hurricane Hole storm-mooring permits
NOAA National Hurricane Center: Atlantic hurricane season climatology and the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information: IBTrACS v04r01, DOI 10.25921/82ty-9e16
World Bank: Reviving the Simpson Bay Lagoon, 2024
Caribbean Compass: hauling-out guide, updated 3 March 2026
noForeignLand: where to haul out for the Caribbean hurricane season, and the community map for the place spine
Noonsite: Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten
Cruising World: Caribbean hurricane holes
float magazin: best spots for the hurricane season, quoted and corrected above
London Marine Insurance Services Ltd private-yacht policy wording and clause schedule, held on file by World Yacht Insurance. Cited by clause name; not published

Place counts and coordinates derived from the noForeignLand community map, August 2026.

Costas Matheou is a licensed insurance agent in Cyprus, supervised by the ICCS and compliant with the EU Insurance Distribution Directive. He runs the desk that arranges cover through this site.

Reviewed by Costas Matheou, licensed insurance agent.

Coverage terms, premiums and deductibles on this page are indicative and not financial advice. Cover is subject to underwriting, survey and the policy wording.

Caribbean Hurricane Holes and Haul-Out Yards: 180 Places, Sourced

Six figures from this directory

What is a hurricane hole, and what does a directory of them give you?

How many storm refuges and haul-out yards are in this directory, and where?

How to read a row: what each field means and where it came from

Why the directory filters on area, not region

Browse all 180 places

Bailey's Boatyard

English Harbour, Antigua

Falmouth harbour marina, Antigua

Indian Creek, Antigua

Jolly Harbour Marina Yard

North Sound Marine

Parham Harbour, Antigua

Slipway Marina

Varadero Aruba Marina & Boatyard

Willie's Diving & Marine Services Inc

Boat Yard Bonaire

Abaco Yacht Services

Bradford Marine

Knowles Marine & Yacht Services

Marsh Harbour Boatyard

Master’s Marine Boatyard

Norman’s Hurricane Hole

R & B Boatyard

Seaworthy Soulutions

Cienfuegos Hurricane Hole

Marina Varadero

Puerto de Vita Hurricane hole

Curaçao Marine Zone

Danny‘s Shipyard

IBC Shipyard

Luperon - Hurricane hole (see Notes)

Marina Tropical Boat Yard

Marítima Del Atlantico Boatyard & Marina

Rio Cumayasa

Carriacou Marine

Clarke's Court Bay

Clarkes Court Boatyard and Marina

Egmont Harbour

Grenada Marine

Hartman Cove Marine Services

Hog Island

Mount Hartman

Spice Island Marine

Tyrell Bay Marine

Tyrrel Bay

Caraïbes Docks Services

Chantier Pigeon-Malendure

Marina Bas-du-Fort

Marina Bas-du-Fort, Point-a-Pierre

Port De Basse-terre

Riviere Salee

Port Morgan

Mosquito Cove

Port Antonio Ship Yard

St. Kitts Marine Works

Harbor House Boat Yard

North Sound, Grand Cayman

IGY Rodney Bay Boatyard

Marigot Bay

Rodney Bay

Geminga boat Yard

Polypat

Time Out Boat Yard

Carenantilles Shipyard

Marin Martinique

Bahia De Guanica

Bahia de Jobos

Boqueron

Ensenada Honda, Culebra

Ensenada Honda, Vieques

Guayanilla Bay

Isleta Marina

Parguera Hurricane Hole

Ponce Yacht And Fishing Club

Safe Harbor Puerto Del Rey

Puerto Ferro and Puerto Mosquito, Vieques

Puerto Real

Varadero Puerto Viejo