[Slick]

Ok, 2nd question: Did the maker of your empire lower your Repair Aptitude when he/she created the empire? This can be checked by looking at your empire by clicking the alien head icon. You won't be able to see the exact percentage, but "pathetic" would be an indicator. This could have been lowered to gain empire points ( a common tactic) by down to 50% which would cut your repairs in half. You can see an exact number by saving the empire, then starting a new game and loading the empire as an "existing" empire to see the exact configuration.

edit: whoops Randallw already hinted at this, sorry.

edit2: are you sure that no repairs are occurring per turn at all? or could you be seeing a number less than expected? If there are no repairs happening at all, I'm not sure what's going on.

edit3: just to rule out another obvious one, you must have the ships in the same sector (same square on the system map) as the spaceyard/repair component(s).