Shipyard Plantation, Hilton Head SC

Most visitors rent a villa. Shipyard has a dozen villa complexes, and a Shipyard villa on Hilton Head usually means a view of a fairway or a lagoon rather than the ocean; our Shipyard rentals page compares them. Beachwalk, at the end of Shipyard Drive, is the closest to the beach. Colonnade Club has a pool and spa heated in season, and Evian is a neighborhood of its own around a five-acre lake. For rental companies that manage homes here and across the island, see our Hilton Head vacation rentals guide.

The Sonesta Resort Hilton Head Island is the oceanfront hotel, at 130 Shipyard Drive, and it is one of the properties on our Hilton Head resorts list. Several vacation-club resorts are here too: Spinnaker at Shipyard, the Carolina Club, Southwind II and the Cottages, all Spinnaker properties, and Port O’Call, a Palmera resort on North Barcelona Road. Hilton Head Health, on Valencia Road, is a wellness resort for adults, with programs from a few days to several weeks, rather than a hotel.

Shipyard sells as homes, villas and timeshare weeks, and the Shipyard Property Owners Association sets the rules for all of them, from gate decals to renovation approvals. If you are buying rather than renting, see Shipyard homes for sale; our Hilton Head real estate guide covers the whole island.

The Shipyard Beach Club is the community’s own oceanfront deck and bar, on the northeast corner next to the Sonesta. It is for owners and for guests staying inside the gate, and the association keeps staff on the deck whenever it is open, so it runs set hours rather than staying open all day and night. Shipyard also has its own beach access for the same people, with a parking lot, a drop-off spot, and restrooms and rinse stations at the start of a boardwalk to the sand.

The sand itself is public, as every beach in South Carolina is below the high-tide line (our Hilton Head beach access guide explains how that works), but the roads to it are private. A day pass to the golf club, the tennis center or the Sonesta covers that trip only and cannot be used for the beach facilities. If you are not staying in Shipyard, Coligny Beach Park, a short ride from the Pope Avenue gate, is the nearest public beach.

The golf here is Shipyard Golf Club: 27 holes in three nines, Clipper, Galleon and Brigantine, played in pairs for an 18-hole round. It is open to the public, and the gate gives golfers a pass for the drive to the clubhouse on Shipyard Drive. Stay-and-play deals from around the island are on our Hilton Head golf packages page.

Van der Meer runs a tennis center on Shipyard Drive, with lessons, clinics and camps for adults and juniors. It and the island’s other courts are in our Hilton Head tennis guide.

There are two places to eat inside the gate: Seacrest Restaurant & Terrace at the Sonesta, for a breakfast buffet or a Lowcountry dinner, and Brickyard Pub at the golf clubhouse, for lunch and happy hour on a patio over the course. Both are on the Shipyard restaurants page. For more choice, the restaurants at Coligny Plaza are just outside the Pope Avenue gate.

Shipyard has two gates, one on Pope Avenue near Coligny and one on William Hilton Parkway (US 278). Both are staffed around the clock, and security patrols the roads day and night. Everyone driving in needs either an owner’s decal or a pass. Both gates are pinned on our Shipyard map.

If you are renting, the owner or your rental or timeshare company authorizes a temporary pass for your stay, good for anything from a day to 30 days, and you collect it at whichever gate you choose. Owners order passes for their guests through the association’s online guest pass portal, or by calling (843) 785-3310, extension 1000, Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Anyone going to the golf club, the tennis center or the Sonesta, including to eat at Brickyard Pub or Seacrest, gets a pass at the gate that covers the trip to that one place.

Inside, bikes are the easy way around. Golf carts are not allowed on Shipyard’s roads or paths. E-bikes are allowed only when an owner has registered them with the association, and then only in pedal mode on the paths, so an e-bike rented from a bike shop or brought by a short-term renter cannot be ridden here.