Chartering: the deposit, the skipper, the handover

Anyone chartering a yacht signs up to two risks at once, and they are rarely kept apart. The first is the deposit. It covers the deductible that the owner’s hull policy retains after a loss, commonly between fifteen hundred and four thousand euro. After any incident it is gone, however small the damage was.

The second is skipper’s liability. It applies where the charterer has to answer personally beyond the deposit, for instance where gross negligence is alleged, or for damage to third parties that the owner’s policy does not carry. This is the exposure that makes separate skipper’s liability worth having rather than optional.

Two practical questions follow. Does any policy you already hold extend to a boat you do not own, and if so, up to what size? And can the deposit itself be insured for the trip? Deposit insurance is widely sold at around nine per cent of the sum, so roughly two hundred and twenty euro on a deposit of two and a half thousand. Whether that is worth it depends on the deposit, not on the boat.

The most important moment is still the handover. A protocol with photographs of every existing scratch, the fuel state, the inventory and the condition of sails and engine decides later what is attributed to you. Take half an hour over it even when the base is pushing to get you away; it is the half hour that decides the deposit at the end of the week.

The paperwork the base will ask for is set by the flag state and the local authority, not by the charter company, and it is stricter in some countries than most crews expect. Croatia and Greece both require a recognised certificate of competence and, where a VHF set is fitted, a radio operator’s certificate for the person using it. An inland certificate is not a substitute. Without the right paper the base will usually not release the boat, and if it does, any cover in play is likely to fall away in liability and hull at the same time.

One last thing that costs crews money every season: the person at the wheel has to hold the required certificate, not merely someone aboard. Passing the helm to a guest for an hour off a lee shore is exactly the situation in which that distinction gets tested.