Boat & Yacht Shipping

Shipping a boat or yacht overseas requires a trailer or a cradle. If your yacht is too large for a trailer, a cradle can be sourced through your marina or it can be custom built to secure the yacht safely on board.

Overseas Brokers offers several methods for shipping boats and yachts internationally:

BOATS AND YACHTS body of pageContainer shipping: small boats that do not exceed a beam of 90 inches and an overall height of 102 inches, including the cradle or trailer, are loaded and braced in a container at one of our warehouses near major shipping ports. We can offer customs clearance and unloading at our destination agent’s warehouse near the destination port. Alternately we can deliver the container to your destination marina for them to offload at any location beyond the port of arrival, or you may prefer to handle customs clearance and local delivery and unloading yourself.

RO/RO (roll-on/roll-off) shipping: RO/RO vessels are designed to load and discharge rolling cargo by means of an access ramp. This is the most common mode of transport for boats and yachts that are too large to fit in a container.  Boats on trailers are towed into the belly of the ship and secured in a parking slot under deck. Yachts on cradles are placed on a rolling trailer called a mafi, which is provided by the RO/RO carrier and towed on board. The yacht is then removed from the mafi trailer and secured with the cradle under deck. RO/RO vessels have various height restrictions. If your sailboat has a mast that exceeds the height limit, the mast should be removed in advance of loading and will be shipped alongside.

LO/LO (lift-on/lift-off) shipping: Yachts that are too large for RO/RO vessels are shipped on deck and secured to the deck with a cradle. The carrier will use a crane and slings to load the yacht onboard. The yacht may be delivered by land after being secured to the cradle, as long as it’s not too large to be transported over the road. Water delivery is available for larger yachts, in which case the cradle is typically delivered in advance by land. The yacht is then lifted from the water with a crane and placed directly onto the cradle on deck. We will arrange inspection and certification of the lashing by NCB, the national cargo bureau. Discharge at the destination port is handled in the same manner as loading at port of origin.

Flat rack shipping: Many boats that cannot fit in a standard container can be loaded on a flat rack which is a container without side walls or a roof. The boat’s trailer or cradle is lashed to the flat rack and then the flat rack is lifted on board. We will arrange inspection and certification of the lashing by NCB, the national cargo bureau. This method displaces extra container slots because of the overhang in the width and/or the extra height and is more expensive than a single container slot. However this method is a solution to destinations where no RO/RO service is available.

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