BLUEMOMENT

Just a bit of follow up re' GJW insurance. They are now extending their required survey period from 7 to 10 years. After a brief discussion they agreed I don't need one this year and will give me another 3 years before I need one.

One of the reasons for an insurance survey is so that the insurers can be sure that the boat they insure is the same as the boat you are claiming. There are lots of cases of insurance fraud where boats have sunk under one ownership long after they have been sold on. There are endless ways that people have tried to rip off insurers.
So the whole thing about hull numbers, sizes, names and the like is important.

An insurance survey shouldn't be a quick half day. There is also report writing time, travel etc.
If it takes a day to survey including travel and a day to get a report written sent etc. then the £600 surveyor is getting £37.50 per hour. You could barely get your car or boat fixed reliably for that. many surveyors would do a 30foot boat for considerably less.

Piperatsea wrote:One of the reasons for an insurance survey is so that the insurers can be sure that the boat they insure is the same as the boat you are claiming. There are lots of cases of insurance fraud where boats have sunk under one ownership long after they have been sold on. There are endless ways that people have tried to rip off insurers.
So the whole thing about hull numbers, sizes, names and the like is important.

I'm sure that there are plenty of ways of covering those points without recourse to a marine surveyor.

Piperatsea wrote: An insurance survey shouldn't be a quick half day. There is also report writing time, travel etc.
If it takes a day to survey including travel and a day to get a report written sent etc. then the £600 surveyor is getting £37.50 per hour. You could barely get your car or boat fixed reliably for that. many surveyors would do a 30foot boat for considerably less.

A day to write the report - you are joking, right?
Cut and paste the boat dimensions etc. into the pro-forma document that you've used several hundred times, add the disclaimers that the engine couldn't be tested because the boat was ashore, that the rig couldn't be surveyed because the mast was stepped etc. etc, insert the few details that are unique to this boat and job done. 2 hours max.

I'd like £37.50 an hour.

Booby Trapper wrote:I'd like £37.50 an hour.

It isn't a fortune by the time tax and NI have been deducted - a decent chunk of tax payable at 40%

I felt really sorry for the bloke at work who had reached the £40,000 pa limit he could put in his pension tax free, it must be a difficult problem.

I would love to pay 3 times as much tax as I do.

I note in my GJW Ts & Cs that they will require a 'self-survey' at next renewal. This has appeared on a friend's new policy, too.

It's not hard to maintain a reasonable maintenance log - to show the loss adjuster in time of need - and, as most large claims are broken moorings-related, to e-photograph one's boat-ropes and moorings fittings regularly. Simply acquiring evidence 'for the subsequent Board of Inquiry'....