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Most questions about insuring a boat occur to hundreds of people at once. Each one still gets answered individually on the telephone, and nobody else hears the answer. That is what this page changes.
One point first, so that it is clear what this is and what it is not: The answers come from the office, not from other readers. On a question of cover, well meant is not good enough. Anyone who relies on a wrong answer finds out after a loss, and by then it is too late.
Nobody sent us these six through the form; they come in by telephone several times a month. One thing to say about them: the answers describe the general position and name the clause to look for in your own wording, because whoever is reading this is usually insured somewhere else.
01 · asked by telephone
No, not under any policy anywhere. A fine is a personal sanction and for that reason is not insurable. The proceedings are a different matter: some contracts include legal expenses cover for regulatory offences, and that is the clause to look for in your own wording. If it is not there, the lawyer is on you.
02 · asked by telephone
That is a question for the wording, and the answer differs more than people expect. Two things are worth checking before the boat comes out: whether cover continues unchanged during lay-up, yard work, craning and launching, and whether your contract is a seasonal one. A seasonal contract has no cover at all outside its months, which is precisely the period the boat spends ashore.
03 · asked by telephone
Intent is excluded from every contract, everywhere. Gross negligence is the interesting case: some wordings waive the defence up to a ceiling expressed as a percentage of the sum insured, others do not waive it at all. Look for the word negligence in your own document, and look for whether alcohol is carved out of the waiver, because it usually is.
04 · asked by telephone
Where a security is demanded after an allegation connected with the operation of the boat, some liability wordings advance the money as a short-term loan, up to a stated limit. Whether yours does, and up to what amount, is worth knowing before you leave rather than from a harbour office. Keep every document the authority hands you, including the ones you cannot read.
05 · asked by telephone
We underwrite up to 2.5 million euro, which is the same figure that applies to salvage costs. Above that we cannot write the risk ourselves. Every underwriter has such a ceiling, and asking for it before you fill in a full proposal saves everybody a week.
06 · asked by telephone
As a rule of thumb, ten to fifteen per cent of the value of the boat per year, everything added together. Insurance is the smallest item in that figure. The largest are almost always the berth and the winter, whichever country you keep her in.
We answer you personally by email in every case. Whether the question also appears here is up to you, with the last tick. If it is about your own contract, calling is quicker, because then we can look into it.
We will answer by email. If the question concerns other people too and you agreed to it, it appears here afterwards, without your name.
What happens to your question
Your question arrives here as an email and goes nowhere else. A person in the office reads it, checks it and only then puts it on the page. Nothing is published automatically. Your name does not appear anywhere, nor your address: what gets published is the substance itself. If we do not understand something, we write to you. If we decide not to publish your question, we tell you that as well.
The English pages answer one question each in full, from how a claim runs to what to look for in a wording.