Insuring a home-built boat: how does a self-built hull get hull and liability cover?

If you built your boat yourself, insuring it raises a question a buyer never faces: what is it worth? There is no bill of sale, no list price, and the hundreds of hours in the shed appear on no receipt. On top of that, some policy wordings exclude home-built boats outright or accept them only with the underwriter's agreement. So read the wording before you apply, and say plainly on the proposal form that the boat is home built.

You prove the value with what you have: receipts for hull material, resin, timber, fittings, engine, electrics and sails, photos from every stage of the build, and a specification sheet giving length, beam, draught, displacement, construction, engine power and year of build. Your own labour is hard to put a figure on; a surveyor can reflect it in a valuation by comparing the market value of similar boats. The higher the sum insured you ask for, the more likely an underwriter is to want such a survey.

Two points decide many claims on a home-built boat. The first is seaworthiness: a boat that was not seaworthy when it first left the slipway is excluded under many hull wordings. The second is defects in design, workmanship or material: if a seam you laminated yourself splits, hull cover usually does not pay for the seam itself, but it may pay for the damage it causes to other parts. A survey on completion or a sea trial with a written report is money well spent. When you compare wordings, look at how they treat home-built boats, how the exclusions for initial unseaworthiness and for defects are phrased, and whether the sum insured can be raised later on presentation of receipts or a valuation. Send the specification sheet, photos and receipts with your enquiry, and you get a clear answer on whether, and for what sum, the boat can be insured.

Worth remembering

Photograph and file everything while you build, and a claim has its best evidence.