A score you can question.
The opportunity score isn’t a black box. It’s the weighted sum of five plain-English signals. Here is exactly how it’s built — and exactly what it can’t know.
How the opportunity score is built, and what it can't know.
Five plain-English signals, weighted and summed. The page shows the full working on a real yacht, and is honest about the limits of AIS.
Listen
Every large yacht carries an AIS transponder that broadcasts its position, openly, as it moves. DockRadar listens to that public signal worldwide — nothing is scraped, nothing is private.
Geofence
Each position is checked against 254 ports and marinas. Cross into a port's radius and that's an arrival; fall silent or leave it, a departure. Presence, read from movement.
Weigh
Being in port isn't the whole story — timing is. Five plain signals, each something you could check yourself on the dock, are weighted and summed into one score from 0 to 100.
Five signals, weighted by how much they matter.
Recent arrival
28 / 100A yacht that has just arrived is the strongest signal. Crew are settling in, the season's plans are forming, and a fresh face on the dock is most likely to land at the right moment. This fades over the first few days.
Out of the shipyard
22 / 100A yacht leaving a refit or shipyard period is frequently recommissioning — bringing systems and crew back up to standard before the season. These moves often come with real hiring.
Time in port
18 / 100There's a sweet spot: long enough that the yacht is reachable and settled, but not so long that crew gaps are already filled. A few days in port scores highest; weeks alongside score lower.
Seasonal churn
16 / 100Crew turnover concentrates around season changes — the start of the Med summer, the Caribbean swing, end-of-season crew moves. Inside these windows, a given dockwalk is simply more likely to coincide with a vacancy.
Hub activity
16 / 100Some ports are crew hubs — Antibes, Palma — where the sheer density of yachts and the constant movement raises the odds of any single visit paying off. Quieter ports score lower on this signal.
One yacht, walked through.
Numbers from the current data, nothing rounded away. Each bar shows how much of a signal’s available weight this yacht actually earned.
Worked example · live
M/Y BEACHOUSE
Promising
A good bet if you're already nearby — drop a CV and a smile.
What a score means on the dock.
Strong
Several signals line up. Worth walking today, CV in hand.
Promising
A good bet if you're already nearby — drop a CV and a smile.
Background
Low urgency. Keep it on your radar, not at the top of the list.
Quiet
Little signal right now. Unlikely to repay a special trip.
What it can — and can’t — know.
AIS can tell us
- Which yachts are physically in port right now.
- How recently each arrived, and how long it has stayed.
- When a yacht leaves, and where it turns up next.
- Whether you’re inside a high-turnover season window.
It cannot tell us
- Whether a yacht is hiring. Nobody broadcasts that.
- Anything about a vessel that switches its transponder off.
- Charter or private — that needs registry data, not AIS.
- What happens on the dock. That part is still yours.
A high score is a better bet, never a promise. When coverage drops, DockRadar says “unseen” — not “empty.”