If you're buying, hauling out or moving a boat in Fort Lauderdale this fall, work backward from Wednesday, October 28. That is when the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show opens, and it runs through Sunday, November 1 across six venues: the Broward County Convention Center, Bahia Mar Yachting Center, Hall of Fame Marina, Las Olas Marina, Pier Sixty-Six Marina and the SuperYacht Village at Pier Sixty-Six South.
All but the convention center are on the water, and four of them are marinas you could keep a boat in the other fifty-one weeks of the year. That is the shape of September and October here: the docks, the inlet, the bridges and the yards that serve owners year-round are also staging a show the organizers put at more than 1,300 boats across nearly 90 acres of exhibit space.
The show is a dockage event before it is a show
Look at what those venues do in an ordinary week. Pier Sixty-Six Marina lists 164 slips for vessels from 40 to 400 feet, with 30 feet of maximum draft and power to 1,200 amps. Las Olas Marina lists 88 slips to 315 feet with three-phase power to 400 amps. Bahia Mar, the show's home marina, has about 250 slips, a 3,000-foot parallel dock and more than 5,000 feet of floating dockage. Hall of Fame Marina's North Dock takes 20 yachts to 170 feet and its South Dock 23 boats to 65 feet, in 10 feet of water.
Those are exactly the berths a buyer or a visiting owner wants in late October, and for that week they are working as show venues. The alternatives are real and they are close:
- Sunrise Harbor Marina — 22 gated slips for yachts 60 to 200 feet, north of the Sunrise Boulevard bridge.
- Marina Bay Marina Resort — 168 slips to 150 feet on the New River's South Fork, overnight through annual.
- New River Downtown Docks — the city's own 100 slips along the Riverwalk, with full utilities and pump-out.
- Lauderdale Marina — slips to 165 feet on SE 15th Street, with a 365-foot fuel dock and high-speed diesel.
- Harbour Towne Marina — wet slips to 200 feet in Dania Beach, three unobstructed miles from the Atlantic.
Rates for show week are quoted, not posted. Length, draft, beam and the number of nights all move the number, and the answer in October depends on what is left. Send us the dates and the boat's dimensions and we will run the quotes.
The New River is your clock
Refit and haul-out work in this city concentrates on the New River, and the reason is capacity. Safe Harbor Lauderdale Marine Center runs a 65-acre yard with haul-out to 485 tons, plus wet and transient slips from 90 to 200 feet. Harbour Towne, down in Dania Beach, runs a 100-ton lift and 650 dry-stack spaces for boats to 50 feet. If you are closing in September and want bottom paint, running-gear work or a survey haul before your insurance binds, those are the machines you are queuing for, and the time to call for a date is before you need one.
Getting up there is the part people underestimate. The New River drawbridges open on demand on VHF channel 9 outside weekday rush hours — roughly 7:30 to 9:00 in the morning and 4:30 to 6:00 in the evening — and closed clearances on the route run 16 to 21 feet. Do not book an 8:00 AM weekday haul-out slot from a beachside marina and assume you will make it. Measure your air draft, plan the run for mid-morning or midday, and give the yard that number along with your beam when you call for the date: the lift booking and the bridge schedule are one decision, not two.
Survey and sea trial: the water is right there
The inlet is why this market is kind to a buyer's calendar. Port Everglades publishes 42 feet of depth in its inner entrance channel and turning basin and puts itself less than a mile from the Atlantic shipping lane, so sea-trial water is minutes from the dock instead of an hour. Marinas seaward of the 17th Street Causeway bridge reach it with no bridge opening at all — Pier Sixty-Six's south docks, and the Hilton's 17th Street basin with 850 feet of superyacht face dock, 480-volt direct-feed power and 17.5 feet at mean low water.
Sequence matters more than speed. Book the haul-out slot first, because it is the scarcest thing you are buying. Set the survey for the day the boat is out of the water. Run the sea trial with the same surveyor aboard, on either side of the haul. Through the last three weeks of October, add margin at every step: the boat you want to inspect may be a boat that is about to go on display, and the surveyor you want is working off the same calendar everyone else is.
Why buyers shop this market in the fall
Volume is the honest answer. Visit Lauderdale, the county's tourism authority, counts 300 miles of navigable inland waterways in Greater Fort Lauderdale, more than 100 marinas, more than 50,000 registered yachts and about 2,000 superyacht visits a year. In practice that means three comparable boats in one day instead of three states — and in show week it means standing in the engine room of a boat you have only read about.
It also means you can shop across categories in an afternoon, because the water here supports all of them. A Boston Whaler 330 Outrage is the console answer for an owner staging Bahamas crossings out of the 15th Street fuel docks. An Azimut Fly 53 is the flybridge case for people who want the Intracoastal and the inlet on the same weekend. An Aquila 46 Yacht is the power-catamaran case, and thin Bahamian water is where that case gets made. The specs and our opinion on each sit on their model pages; the marinas, yards and anchorages behind all of it are on our Fort Lauderdale guide.
A night on the hook before the docks fill
September is the month to use Lake Sylvia, the protected basin just south of the Las Olas Isles and the traditional staging stop before a Gulf Stream crossing. One rule to know first: Florida requires the state's free long-term anchoring permit for any vessel anchored 14 or more days within a 30-day period, in effect since January 1, 2026. If your fall plan has the boat sitting at anchor while you wait on a yard slot or a weather window, pull the permit from FWC before day 14, not after.
What to do in the next two weeks
The constraint this fall is the calendar, not the inventory. Decide the week you want the boat hauled, the week you want it surveyed and the week you need a slip, then lock them in that order. Tell us the hull, the dates and what needs doing, and we will line up the slip, the yard slot, the surveyor and the sea trial while there is still room in the week. Email TS@MintedYachts.com, call +1 (404) 805-9819, or use the form on any page — we are based in Fort Lauderdale, and these are the docks we walk.