Palma de Mallorca is one of the largest refit hubs in the Mediterranean, and STP Shipyard runs on an open-yard model: owners and captains select and coordinate their own contractors for each trade rather than working through a single yard-appointed team. For AV, network, and connectivity scope, that model changes the planning problem. There is no single general contractor tying the electrician's chase, the joiner's panel cut, and the IT contractor's rack layout together. That coordination has to be done deliberately, before the vessel arrives, or it gets done badly on the spot during the yard period.
This is not a generic refit checklist — Cave Group's yacht refit playbook covers that ground. This is specifically about what changes when the yard is Palma/STP: multiple independent trades bidding separately, and a local connectivity market with more competing satcom and cellular integrators based there than almost anywhere else in the Mediterranean.
What the Open-Yard Model Means for Scope of Work
Someone has to own the interfaces between trades
At a yard where the owner or captain contracts separately with the electrician, the AV/network integrator, the joiner, and possibly a dedicated satcom specialist, no single company is automatically responsible for making sure the rack cooling plan, the cable pathway, and the touchpanel wiring agree with each other. That coordination role has to be assigned — usually to the AV/network integrator or a project manager working on the owner's behalf — and it has to be assigned before contracts are signed, not once the vessel is already in the yard.
The practical failure mode is familiar to anyone who has run a Mediterranean yard period: the joiner closes a ceiling section before the AV contractor has confirmed conduit routing, or the electrician pulls power to the rack room before the network contractor has finalized switch and gateway placement. In an open-yard model, preventing that requires a shared drawing set and a single point of coordination that all trades are contractually required to work from — not just good intentions.
Get scope-of-work documents that name the interfaces, not just the equipment
A Palma refit contract for AV and network work should specify more than a parts list. It should name: who owns cable pathway conflicts between trades, who signs off on rack cooling and power before the space is closed up, and who is the point of contact if a trade's schedule slips and pushes into another trade's window. Because STP's model puts that coordination burden on the owner's team by default, it is worth negotiating into the AV/network contractor's scope explicitly rather than assuming it is implied.
Connectivity Planning Specific to a Palma Yard Period
Mallorca is a hub for maritime connectivity providers — and that has planning implications
Mallorca is a documented regional hub for maritime connectivity service providers, with multiple independent satcom and cellular integrators based there serving the wider Mediterranean superyacht fleet. Valour Consultancy's maritime cellular research put it directly: "a regional hub for maritime service providers is Mallorca, where multiple connectivity service providers are based." (Cellular connectivity in the superyacht realm)
That concentration of specialists is useful — it means a captain or owner refitting at STP has real choice in who designs and commissions the vessel's Starlink Maritime, cellular, and any retained VSAT connectivity — but it also means scope can overlap or gap between the AV/network integrator and a separately contracted connectivity specialist. Before the yard period starts, it should be explicit which company owns the WAN failover logic end to end: which company configures the router policy that decides how traffic moves between Starlink, cellular, and any backup satellite path, and which company is responsible if that failover does not behave correctly during sea trials.
Decide the hybrid connectivity architecture before cable is pulled
The broader industry shift documented in recent connectivity reporting is toward hybrid systems that bond several WAN sources — Starlink, cellular, and in some cases retained VSAT or newer LEO services like OneWeb — into one automatically failing-over connection, rather than running Starlink as a single primary link with a manual backup. As one integrator described it, the goal is a system that can "self-correct, failover instantly and absorb outages without the user noticing." (A complete guide to hybrid superyacht connectivity for uninterrupted internet at sea)
Whether a given refit needs that level of bonded redundancy, or whether Starlink Maritime with Peplink cellular failover is sufficient, is a design decision that should be made with the vessel's cruising pattern and owner expectations in mind — not defaulted to whatever the connectivity contractor typically sells. It is worth asking any Palma-based connectivity specialist directly how their system behaves during a Starlink satellite handoff, and whether failover to cellular or a secondary link is automatic or requires manual intervention.
Geofencing and regional data plans matter more in a Mediterranean-based refit
Starlink Maritime service plans and geofencing rules affect which countries and coastal zones the service works in, and those rules have been applied inconsistently across the Mediterranean. A vessel refitting in Palma and then cruising toward the Balearics, mainland Spain, or further into the Mediterranean should confirm its Starlink data plan and any prohibited-zone restrictions before departure, rather than discovering a coverage gap at sea. This is a question to raise directly with whichever connectivity provider is scoped for the refit, since plan structures and regional restrictions change over time.
Questions to Resolve Before Leaving the Yard
A Palma/STP yard period should not end until the owner's team has confirmed:
- Which single company or project manager is contractually responsible for coordinating cable pathways, rack access, and power sequencing between the electrician, joiner, and AV/network contractor.
- Which company owns the WAN failover configuration end to end, if connectivity and AV/network scope are split between separate contractors.
- Whether the vessel's connectivity architecture is a single primary link with manual backup, or a bonded hybrid system with automatic failover — and which one the owner actually wants.
- What the Starlink Maritime data plan and geofencing terms are for the waters the vessel will cruise after leaving Palma.
- Who is responsible for testing WAN failover, network segmentation (owner, guest, crew, and control traffic kept separate), and camera or NVR function before sea trials, not after.
None of these questions has a single correct answer that applies to every vessel — they depend on size, cruising pattern, and how the owner's team wants risk and cost split across trades. But leaving them unresolved until the vessel is back in the water is how yard-period change orders happen.
Cave Group works with naval architects, yards, and owner representatives on new-build and refit technology packages in Italy, Monaco, Greece, and the United States; see the marine services page for the current scope of that work, including Crestron control, Starlink Maritime integration, and UniFi networking on vessels from 60 to 200+ feet.
Sources
- Cellular connectivity in the superyacht realm — SuperyachtNews, Joshua Flood, Valour Consultancy
- A complete guide to hybrid superyacht connectivity for uninterrupted internet at sea — Boat International / ONEXP
- The battle for bandwidth — SuperyachtNews, Joshua Flood, Valour Consultancy