It’s late afternoon, the wind is picking up, and the harbour you planned to reach is still 20 miles away. There’s another one closer, but you’ve never been there. How deep is the entrance? Will they have room for a boat your length? Which VHF channel do you call them on?
I sail a Hanse 388 along the Spanish coast, and I’ve asked myself those questions more times than I’d like. The answers were spread across pilot books, PDFs, old forum posts and harbour websites that hadn’t been updated in years. So I started putting them together in one place.
476 harbours, from Galicia to the Canary Islands
BerthDB covers the marinas, yacht clubs, fishing harbours and anchorages on every coast of Spain: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, the Balearics and the Canaries. Each coast has its own page listing all of its harbours, and there’s a map you can filter by type, by services and by whether your boat fits.
Tell it about your boat once
Enter your length, your draft and the safety margin you like under the keel. From then on, every harbour shows whether you fit, both at the entrance and inside. The map pins turn green, amber or red. You don’t need an account: it’s saved in your browser.
What each harbour page shows
The depth at the entrance and inside, the maximum length, the number of berths (and visitor berths where we know them), the VHF channel, the phone and email, and the services, from fuel and water to the travel-lift. Then what you’ll actually see as you come in: the lights on the approach, taken from the official List of Lights of the Spanish Navy Hydrographic Institute, with a warning if one is out. Today’s tide curve, where there is a tide. And the weather right now, in knots and Beaufort, with wave height and sea temperature.
Where the data comes from
Wherever possible, the figures come from public sources: regional port authorities, the open data published by the Spanish regions, the Hydrographic Institute, each harbour’s own website and OpenStreetMap. Each source is credited with its date, and there’s a page explaining where every kind of data comes from and under which licence. When two sources disagree, the most recent official one wins.
One important note: BerthDB is not a nautical chart and is not meant for navigation. Before entering any harbour, check your charts and the notices to mariners, and call the harbour on VHF.
Free, in English and Spanish
There are no ads, no subscriptions and no paywall. That’s not going to change.
If you’d like to help
Your coffees pay for the server and for the hours spent finding, checking and matching data from dozens of sources. Just as useful: send the link to someone who sails, or who’s planning a trip to Spain by boat. And if you know a harbour well and something is wrong or missing, I’d love to hear about it.
Fair winds! ⛵
https://berthdb.com/