IGY Marinas Appoints Wayne Whitby as Shipyard Services Director

IGY Marinas has appointed Wayne Whitby as Shipyard Services Director, placing a veteran yacht engineer and refit specialist at the centre of its effort to expand technical support across the group’s marina network. Whitby will be based at IGY Sète Marina in France, with a brief covering in-water refit, maintenance, technical assistance and broader shipyard-service coordination.

The appointment is significant because it moves a global marina operator further into the service layer that surrounds a superyacht berth. IGY says Whitby brings more than three decades of experience across onboard engineering, shore-based refit projects, technical management and commercial leadership, giving the role a practical engineering foundation rather than treating shipyard services as an extension of marina administration alone.

A technical brief built around refit

Whitby’s background spans more than 32 years in the yachting sector. IGY says he has served as a Chief Engineer, spent seven years managing refit engineering projects ashore and held technical-management positions for a further four years, experience that places him on both sides of the owner–yard relationship: operating yachts at sea and delivering technical work from shore.

Most recently, Whitby served as Technical Sales Director and Technical Director at ESAOM CESA Shipyard in Italy. In that role he worked across technical and commercial operations supporting yacht owners, captains, engineers and other industry stakeholders, an overlap that is particularly relevant to large-yacht refit where scope, budget, access, scheduling and engineering decisions are tightly connected.

IGY says the new Shipyard Services Director will lead development and expansion of its shipyard-service offer across the marina network. That includes maintenance and refit coordination as well as technical and owner support, with the emphasis on helping yachts solve work requirements while remaining within or moving through IGY destinations rather than treating a marina stay as a purely berthing transaction.

Why Sète matters in the network

Basing the role at IGY Sète gives the appointment a clear Mediterranean operating context. Sète sits on the French Mediterranean coast and has developed as a large-yacht service location where deep-water access, marina infrastructure and proximity to established technical suppliers can support yachts between cruising periods, during maintenance stops or ahead of longer refit programmes.

For a marina operator, the practical value of technical capability is strongest when it can be connected to a yacht’s existing itinerary. Owners and captains often face a choice between interrupting a programme for yard work or resolving smaller packages during a planned stop, and a marina that can coordinate engineering, maintenance and specialist attendance can reduce the friction between those two options.

IGY’s wider network stretches across the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, so the Sète base also gives Whitby a platform from which procedures and supplier relationships can be developed for use elsewhere. The company says its network serves more than 10,000 annual customers at 24 marinas in 14 countries, a scale that creates potential for technical services to be offered as a network capability rather than only as a local marina feature.

From marina berth to service platform

The appointment reflects a broader change in the superyacht-marina business. Large yachts increasingly expect a berth to sit within an ecosystem that can also handle shore power, bunkering, provisioning, crew support, logistics, maintenance and technical attendance, particularly when yachts operate internationally and cannot rely on the same home-port suppliers throughout the year.

For refit and maintenance, coordination can be as important as the work itself. Captains need clarity over contractors, access, insurance, permits, lifting or diving restrictions, waste handling, parts deliveries and the timing of multiple trades, while owners and managers need visibility over cost and programme risk. A marina group that can organise those interfaces can become more useful to a yacht even when it is not replacing a full-service shipyard.

IGY is careful to frame the new position around support and coordination rather than claiming that every marina in its portfolio becomes a shipyard. That distinction matters: major structural projects, class work, paint programmes and complex machinery overhauls still depend on specialist facilities. The opportunity is to make routine maintenance, in-water work and technical problem-solving easier across the network, while directing larger scopes to suitable yards when required.

What the appointment signals

Whitby’s combination of engineering and commercial experience suggests IGY wants shipyard services to be managed as a professional technical business line rather than an informal concierge add-on. Simon Bryan, IGY’s Vice President of Operations for Europe, highlighted Whitby’s engineering, project-management and client-facing experience when announcing the appointment, while Whitby said he intends to build on the group’s global marina and yacht-services platform.

For yacht owners and managers, the useful test will be how consistently that capability can be delivered from location to location. Standardised service processes, clear technical responsibility and reliable local supplier networks could make an international marina group more valuable during seasonal movements, especially for yachts that require maintenance between charter periods or before major passages.

The appointment does not by itself change the physical capabilities of IGY’s marinas, but it creates a senior role specifically responsible for connecting berthing with technical support. In a market where large-yacht infrastructure is increasingly judged on what happens after the yacht ties up, that is a meaningful strategic shift and one that should become measurable through the range of work IGY is able to coordinate across its network.

There is also a commercial reason for marina groups to deepen technical services. Large-yacht berth supply is limited in many established cruising areas, but owners increasingly compare facilities on the quality of support available around the berth as well as location alone. A yacht that can organise preventative maintenance, defect rectification and specialist visits efficiently may spend longer within a network and be more likely to return between cruising seasons.

For crew, the practical benefit should be simpler access to help when technical issues arise away from the yacht’s normal home base. That does not remove the captain, chief engineer or yacht manager from the decision chain, but it can give them a more consistent local point of contact for assessing work, finding contractors and coordinating access, which is often where time is lost during short maintenance windows.