Valencia July 2016

We have visited a few marinas between La Rochelle and Valencia over the past year and in my opinion, Marina Juan Carlos 1 is probably the best one we have found, from a practical point of view. It is not fancy, it has the basics needed on site and access to almost everything else you could need. Unpretentious, value for money, quiet, secure, well connected. It is also situated as close to Valencia as you can get without booking a hotel room. We have added some tourist tips at the end, but the prime aim of this note is to give some practical ‘local’, hopefully, time-saving, directions for visiting yachtsmen on local amenities to save time looking for them.

There are two marinas in Valencia, the Real Club Nautico de Valencia on the south of the commercial harbour and the Marina Real Juan Carlos 1 on the north side.

The RCN was moved to its current location to make way for America’s Cup harbour expansion and is a little isolated without your own transport; there is one bus every hour into town. It is home to Varadero Valencia with a full array of dockyard facilities catering to all sizes of yachts and there is a North Sails loft there. It is, as tends to be the case with Real Clubs, the more expensive of the two.

Marina Real Juan Carlos 1, part of America’s Cup developments, is the opposite in these respects, it is cheaper, has no repair facilities and is far more conveniently placed for visitors. But if you do need repairs or servicing, Varadero Valencia will travel from the RCN to Marina RJC1.

Varadero did a fair amount of refit and servicing work for me. The prices are what they are, the workmanship was entirely acceptable and the Customer Service was excellent.

Costs in Marina JC1 are quite reasonable. We ended up there from March to July and the three months from May to July, for an 11.75m cat, worked out at just about 600 euros per month when discounts were factored in. The Marina is open to the public during the day and gets busy at the weekends but the majority of pontoons have secure gates and at night the Marina is closed to the public, access is by key card and there is security on site.

The Arrivals and Fuel berth is on the north side of the harbour entrance immediately to starboard on entry.  The visitor’s berths are in the North Marina towards the western end and once booked in, the Marinieros will lead you to your berth in a RIB and assist in mooring; stern or bows to laid moorings.

Chris Thorne