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Walk through a repair shed in November and count the value: a handful of customers’ yachts and motorboats can easily be worth more than the yard’s buildings, machinery and stock combined. A standard public liability policy typically excludes or restricts damage to property in your care, custody or control — the precise thing a yard does all day. Marine trades wordings turn that on its head: vessels in your custody, ashore and afloat, are treated as a core section with their own limits, rather than an exclusion with a grudging write-back.
Two numbers drive that section: the maximum value of any one vessel you will take on, and the maximum total value in your custody at once. Both are worth working out honestly — including the winter peak, not the summer average — because they shape both the cover and how insurers view the risk.
Ship-repairers’ liability is the marine market’s liability form for businesses that work on vessels. Beyond damage to the vessel while you are working on her, it is typically structured to deal with the marine-specific consequences of that work: damage arising after redelivery caused by the work you did, liabilities arising while a vessel is moved, hauled, launched or berthed by you, and — subject to the wording — sea trials. The scope, limits and conditions differ meaningfully between insurers, which is exactly why the wording deserves more attention than the premium.
Testing an engine repair at the berth is one thing; taking a customer’s boat to sea to prove the work is another. Whether sea trials are covered, by which section, with whose crew aboard and under what conditions varies between policies. If trials are part of how you hand work back, that needs to be in the presentation from the start.
Grinding, welding and burning near glass-reinforced plastic, resin, solvent and fuel is the classic marine yard fire scenario, and insurers treat it accordingly. Expect questions about hot works permits, separation from GRP and flammables, fire watch after the work stops, and housekeeping in the shed. These controls are not box-ticking: a fire that starts in one hull rarely stops there, and the same aggregation that makes the custody section valuable makes the fire risk serious. Yards that can describe real, followed procedures present far better to the specialist markets.
Liability policies respond to damage your work causes; they are not a guarantee of the work itself. The cost of redoing a defective job is generally yours, and the interesting arguments live at the boundary — where a defective repair goes on to cause damage to the rest of the vessel. Where that line sits is a wording question, and one of the main reasons two apparently similar quotes can behave very differently at claim time.
There is a further boundary worth naming: workmanship against design. A yard that builds to a customer’s or naval architect’s design is in a different position from one that designs in-house. Design errors are professional-indemnity-shaped risks — the same design-liability thinking we set out for fit-out contractors in our design liability guide applies afloat: if you design as well as build, say so, and make sure one policy or another clearly owns that exposure.
Around those marine sections sits the ordinary substance of a combined policy: buildings, sheds and machinery; your own materials and stock; employers’ liability for skilled staff doing genuinely hazardous work — at height on cradles, lifting, working over water; business interruption if the shed burns and the order book stalls; and transit cover if you collect and deliver by road. None of it is exotic, but all of it should be sized against the same honest picture of the yard the marine sections rely on.
This is a class where the presentation does much of the work. We sit down with you — at the yard, ideally — and build the picture the specialist marine markets want: the work you actually do, the values you actually hold, the controls you actually follow. Then we approach the insurers who write marine trades deliberately, and compare what comes back on wording first, premium second. Our Weymouth office puts us close to the water; our clients’ yards are the sort of places we like visiting.
It is the marine market’s liability cover for businesses that build, repair or work on vessels. It is designed around exposures a standard public liability policy handles badly: damage to the vessel being worked on, liabilities during hauling, launching and moving vessels, damage that emerges after redelivery from the work done, and — depending on the wording — sea trials.
Under a properly arranged marine trades policy, vessels in your care, custody or control are a core insured section, ashore and afloat, subject to the limits you choose. Under a generic commercial policy they are commonly excluded or heavily restricted — which is the single biggest reason repair yards should not rely on standard packages.
Generally no — liability cover responds to damage your work causes, not to the cost of re-performing the job itself. Where a defective repair causes further damage to the vessel, the position depends on the wording, and this boundary is one of the most important things to compare between quotes.
Cover for sea trials varies significantly between wordings — some include it within ship-repairers’ liability subject to conditions, others restrict or exclude it. If trials are part of how you hand work back to customers, that must be declared and the wording checked before you rely on it.
Yes. Building to someone else’s design and designing in-house are different exposures. Design errors are closer to professional indemnity territory than to workmanship, and if you design as well as build, the placement should make clear which policy owns that risk.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This page is general information, not advice on a specific policy.
