On 27 April 2026 D-Marin announced that it had completed an €8.5 million redevelopment of Gouvia Marina on Corfu. The work added 104 berths for vessels of up to 50 metres and gave the whole waterfront over to people on foot. It also added a solar array, making Gouvia the operator’s first Greek marina to generate its own electricity on site. The work was declared finished before the Ionian summer began, which for a harbour of this size is the main achievement.
The bay
The marina is in Gouvia Bay, on the east coast of Corfu, some 7 kilometres from the island’s international airport. Sailors have long treated the bay as the natural link between the Adriatic and the Mediterranean: a place to put in and wait out bad weather in comfort. Gouvia was the first privately owned marina in Greece and is the largest on the island. It holds 1,200 yachts on permanent and floating pontoons (floating walkways that boats tie up to), with room on dry land for around 500 more.
That size is why the redevelopment matters, and also why it was difficult. A marina of 1,200 boats is a working town with the sea running through it. Rebuilding one without closing it is a harder problem than cutting a new basin out of an empty shore.
What was built
The 104 new berths are the main news, and their length of 50 metres decides who they are for. The Ionian has never been short of water. It has been short of places where a vessel of that length can take a proper berth, with power, water and a boatyard behind it, instead of a night tied up along a quay.
The pontoons under the new berths were built in phases. SF Marina made them at Porto Lagos in northern Greece. In a first phase, finished in the summer of 2023, it laid 550 metres of concrete floating dock, which it says it installed in under three weeks. A second phase added a further 500 metres and a set of floating breakwaters. Funding came through Greece 2.0, the national recovery and resilience plan, and NextGenerationEU, the European Union’s recovery fund.
A waterfront for walking
A guest will notice the shore before the pontoons. The waterfront is now fully pedestrian, the internal roads have been extensively resurfaced, and new parking areas have been laid. More than 2,000 trees and plants have gone in. There is a playground and an amphitheatre, rebuilt toilets and showers, charging points for electric cars, and 6,000 square metres onshore of new dry storage.
It is unusual to find a marina that has thought about where people walk. Most are laid out for cars and cranes, and visitors have to find their own way between them. Gouvia has put people first, and the amphitheatre makes the intention plain: the marina belongs to the island as much as to the boats in it.
Power and water at every berth
Every berth now has a smart pedestal, a post that supplies electricity and water. Both are read and managed remotely through D-Marin’s own app. A crew no longer has to ask for a meter reading, and the marina knows exactly what it supplies.
The marina also has a solar power system of 100 kWp, some 167 MWh a year, or roughly a fifth of the electricity the marina uses to run. Korina Kostakaki, head of sustainability and health and safety at D-Marin Greece, describes it as the company’s first Greek marina to generate renewable energy on site, and as a step towards cutting its carbon emissions. Ioannis Koutsodontis, regional director of D-Marin Greece, puts the wider aim more plainly. The upgrade, he says, “goes far beyond infrastructure.”
A place to stay
For yachts passing Corfu, the island has always been a point of entry or exit. A vessel coming down from Montenegro and the Dalmatian coast of Croatia enters Greek water here, and one heading north out of the Ionian islands leaves it. A harbour that can take a 50-metre vessel on a proper berth, service it, and let its guests walk out onto a planted waterfront instead of a car park gives a yacht a reason to slow down.
For an owner taking a yacht through the Ionian, Gouvia can now be a base for a whole season. Paxos, Antipaxos and the Lefkada channel lie to the south, and the coasts of Albania and Montenegro are within an easy passage north. With the airport 7 kilometres away, changing crew or guests is simple.
Who is this for
Gouvia suits an owner who wants a home port in the Ionian for a summer, and a charter guest flying in to Corfu to join a yacht. Low wooded hills surround the bay, and villas with pools line the peninsula across from the pontoons. Places to eat in the marina range from simple bistros to more formal restaurants. Corfu Town, with its Venetian fortresses and neoclassical buildings, is close by. In the evening, the masts stand dark against the sunset over still water.
