Methodology

How we collect and check rates

1. Sources

Marina websites and their rate sheets (web pages and PDF files), fee schedules published by the cities and counties that run public marinas, and public meeting documents. Market rent studies commissioned by public agencies are used only when no official rate sheet exists, and are labeled as such.

2. Collection

Our crawler visits each marina's official website at a slow pace, follows the robots.txt rules of every site and never bypasses a block. Every document that contains rates is archived with its retrieval date.

3. Reading the documents

Rates are read by rules and, since October 2026, with the help of an AI model that turns each document into a structured table. The AI only reads: it never publishes anything by itself.

4. Checks before publication

  • The price and its sentence must appear word for word in the source document; otherwise the line is discarded.
  • Plausibility checks: price per foot within realistic bounds, consistency between nightly, monthly and annual rates.
  • Rates reserved for some boats (wide beam, catamarans), rates without a date, or with “call”, “from” or “minimum” are not published automatically.
  • Transient stays and long-term leases are kept apart, so a monthly transient rate is never compared with a monthly lease.

5. What the labels mean

  • Observed rate: read on an official document, with its retrieval date.
  • Assumption · editable: a default value of the calculator (insurance, maintenance, fuel, depreciation) that you can change.
  • Your input: a value you entered.
  • From: the marina publishes several rates for the same case (season, residency, beam); the lowest is shown.

6. Practical information

Addresses, phone numbers and office hours come from public business listings and OpenStreetMap; nearby places and fuel docks from OpenStreetMap; tides from NOAA tide predictions. Services are listed only when a source confirms them.

7. Limits

Rates change. Always confirm with the marina before you book or sign a lease. Taxes, electricity and fees may apply on top of the slip rate; we show them when the rate sheet states them.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Map tiles by OpenFreeMap. Tide predictions: NOAA CO-OPS.