Home / For international owners / Cover in detail
Rats, mice and birds: what they do to a laid up boat
Short answer
The bite itself is rarely the expensive part.
What costs money is the short circuit,
the cooling hose that no longer holds and the engine that pays for it on the first start of the
season.
A boat ashore for the winter is a warm, dry, quiet place with soft insulation to nest in, cable looms to gnaw and cooling and fuel hoses at exactly the right height. Rats and mice do most of it in northern yards, birds do the rest in southern marinas, and neither leaves a note. The bite itself is rarely the expensive part. What follows is: a short circuit in the loom, a cooling hose that lets go on the first start of the season, an engine that runs dry before anyone on the pontoon notices.
This is where the wording matters, and it differs from one insurer to the next. Some contracts deal only with the part that was actually bitten, the cable, the hose, the piece of insulation. Others say plainly that the damage caused by that failure belongs to the same event. Between those two sits the difference between a small invoice and a yard bill for a rebuilt engine, so the clause is worth reading before it is needed rather than after. On electric and hybrid boats, ask how the drive and charging installation are treated, because that is a newer question and not every wording answers it. Our hull wording excludes animal bite in every tier. Only on electric and hybrid boats with our electric cover is consequential damage from animal bite included, up to 10,000 euros in Basis and 20,000 euros from Basis Plus.
Prevention is dull and it works. Clean the engine bay and the bilge before the boat goes ashore, take every scrap of food and every cushion off the boat, screen vents and openings with fine mesh, and unplug the shore cable so that nothing stays warm. If it has happened anyway, photograph the bite marks before anything is touched, keep the part that was removed, and note the date the boat was last checked. Proving that an animal did it, rather than age, is close to impossible once the old loom is in a skip.
Worth remembering
The bite
is usually a small invoice
What follows
is the one that hurts
Which of the two a wording deals with is the question to settle before the boat goes ashore, not in April.
Questions
What owners ask us about this
Is a rodent bite sudden damage or wear and tear?
A bite is sudden, but some wordings exclude animal bite expressly, ours included, except under the electric cover for electric and hybrid boats. Where it is covered, the argument usually starts with the damage that follows.
What about bird droppings on deck?
Soiling and gnawing are two different things. Cleaning counts as maintenance in many wordings, while a chewed loom or a ruined cushion is a damage event. Check which of the two your clause actually names.
How do I prove that an animal did it?
Photographs of the bite marks before any repair, the removed part kept in a bag, and a note of when the boat was last inspected. A surveyor can still work with that months later.
Related
Not sure whether you qualify?
Whether it is “Rats, mice and birds: what they do to a laid up boat” or another question: send us your residence and the flag your boat flies. You will get a straight answer in one email; including a no, if that is the answer.
Was this useful?
