On 13 November 2025 the Municipal Port Fund of Mykonos published a list of works already under way at Tourlos Marina, in the New Port of Mykonos. Every item on it was structural. The quay wall was being repaired and restored, with protective concrete slabs sunk against it. The ramp where boats are launched and hauled out was being repaired. Behind the artificial blocks, the excavation was being filled with graded material. The formwork for the Islet’s superstructure, the moulds that hold wet concrete in shape, was complete, and concreting was to follow. The last stage of the work was the concreting of that superstructure and the fitting of bollards and fenders. These are repairs to the harbour where most of the island’s yachts lie, and they matter more than anything decorative would have.
The list, read plainly
Athanasios Kousathanas-Megas, president of the Port Fund, gave the purpose in one sentence. The works aim at still better service for berthed vessels, as part of the effort to develop yachting further. Together with cruise, he said, yachting contributes to the qualitative upgrade of the island and to the strengthening of the local economy.
His sentence promises no more berths and no longer ones. A quay wall under restoration is one that had begun to fail. Concrete slabs sunk against its foot are scour protection, laid because the sea was taking the ground from beneath it. Graded material filled in behind artificial blocks gives the wall back the mass that holds it in place. This is the work a harbour does when its existing structure needs to survive another decade of summers, and none of it prepares the harbour for a larger class of vessel.
Bollards and fenders
The last item on the list is the one a captain feels. Bollards, the posts that take the mooring lines, and fenders, the cushions between hull and quay, are the only parts of a marina that a hull and a line touch. A bollard that has worked loose in its bedding means a line that cannot be trusted in a meltemi, the strong summer wind of the Aegean. A row of fenders that has gone hard or gone missing means damage to the paintwork, and then to the hull plating. They are the least photogenic items in a port budget and the first thing a crew inspects on arrival.
It is right that they come last. Fittings are bolted to a superstructure, a superstructure is poured onto a wall, and a wall is worth pouring onto only once its face and its backfill are sound. Tourlos was rebuilt from the ground the sea washes upward. That is slower than dressing up the quay, and it lasts much longer.
The 25-metre limit
The Port Fund’s own regulation is clear about where each yacht lies. Tourlos, the New Port, takes vessels of less than 25 metres overall: motor yachts, sailing yachts and rigid inflatable boats. Motor yachts above 25 metres go to the Old Port at Chora, the island’s main town, where sailing yachts of any kind are barred.
So the work at Tourlos does not bring superyacht berthing to Mykonos, whatever the season’s traffic might suggest. It repairs the harbour that holds the smaller half of the fleet. A 40-metre yacht lies exactly where it lay before, at the Old Port or at anchor off Ornos or Panormos, with its tender running to shore. The change for that owner is indirect and real. The marina that takes everything under 25 metres keeps taking it, and does not start pushing boats out onto an island that has nowhere else to put them.
A working port first
Tourlos was built to move people, and it still does. The Port Fund bans private and commercial pleasure yachts from entering or leaving between 9.30am and 10.30am, when the scheduled passenger and car ferries run. Yachts may arrive for mooring only between noon and sunset. The captain may not leave the island for the whole time the yacht is moored.
These are the rules of a ferry and cruise port that also keeps yachts, and they are worth knowing before a passage plan is drawn to arrive at 10am. A harbour with that much scheduled traffic wears faster than a private marina, which is the plainest explanation for a failing quay wall.
Through the winter
Guests saw none of this during the season. The works ran through the winter months, the only quiet weeks the Cyclades give a port, and the Port Fund listed the repair of the damaged quay wall in the marina among its works completed in 2025. The berth a yacht takes in July depends on concrete cured in December, on whether a wall was given its mass back, and on whether the bollard on the quay is bedded in something sound.
In November 2025 the island began giving its quay walls the attention they had been owed. The Port Fund lists the restoration as complete, and the quay walls of the New Port will be back in full operational condition by August 2026.
Who is this for
Tourlos suits a skipper of a smaller motor yacht, sailing yacht or RIB who wants a berth inside the island’s working harbour. The basin of floating pontoons lies behind the long ferry mole and its terminal buildings, and a wooden caique, a traditional Greek boat, lies among the motor yachts. White houses climb the bare granite hillside behind. Berths are booked online, only for arrival dates within the next 30 days, and check-in opens online 24 hours before arrival.
