Marine Trade Insurance
Marine trade insurance is commercial cover for a business that works on other people's boats. Its centre is legal liability for a customer's vessel in your care, custody or control. The owner's own boat policy switches off while their boat is in your hands, so that cover has to come from yours.
Written for the trades with no page of their own: boat builders, boat repairers, riggers, marine engineers, chandleries and surveyors. World Yacht Insurance introduces the enquiry. We are not an insurer and we carry no risk.
If you are a one-person mobile trade with no employees and no premises, a separate product with its own published eligibility test is likely to be the better route, and it is linked further down.
Reviewed by Costas Matheou, licensed insurance agent (Cyprus), ICCS certificate 6882. Last reviewed 29 August 2026.
cl. 2.1.10
Where the owner's own boat policy stops, quoted from the wording
£5,000,000
Employers' liability minimum in law, and the figure two marina groups ask contractors for
None
UK statutes making public liability compulsory. Your customers' sites do it instead
24 hours
Quote terms in writing
Does public liability cover a customer's boat in your care?
Not by itself. Public liability answers for injury and for damage to other people's property, but property in your own care, custody or control is the classic carve-out. On a marine trade policy that cover is bought back as a named extension, which is why our partner's published schedule lists it separately from the public liability limit itself.
Read the partner's own schedule for the marine trade and the split is on the page. Public liability sits under one heading with its limit of indemnity. Then, under a second heading called Additional Liability Covers, sit four separate items: legal liability for damage to third party vessels in your care, custody or control, movement of third party owned vessels, consequences of faulty workmanship, and heat work away from your premises. Four things listed apart from the main cover, because they are apart from it.
Source: the partner's published mobile marine tradesmen schedule, read 26 August 2026. That schedule belongs to the one-person mobile product rather than to the wider marine trade programme, and this page says so rather than quietly borrowing its authority. What it evidences is the shape of the cover, not the terms of your quotation.
The half nobody publishes: the owner's own policy stops at your gate
Ask a yard owner who pays when a customer's boat is damaged in the yard and a common answer is that the owner has insurance. That answer is worth testing against the boat owner's actual wording, because the leisure wordings on this same distribution chain say the opposite in terms. The FreeTime Pleasure Craft policy wording excludes, from the boat owner's liability to third parties:
any liability incurred whilst Your Craft is being used by or is in the custody or control of: i) shipyard operators or their employees; ii) repair yard operators or their employees; iii) slipway operators or their employees; iv) yacht club operators or their employees; v) marina operators or their employees; vi) delivery skippers or their employees or crew; vii) sales agencies or their employees; or viii) any other similar organisations.
FreeTime Pleasure Craft policy wording, clause 2.1.10, reference GS_MAR_PC_PW_v08.3, no issue date printed on the document, read 26 August 2026.
The yacht and motor boat wording on the same chain draws the line in different words and the same place. It excludes from the owner's liability to others:
the legal liabilities of anyone operating, managing or working upon the Vessel who is employed by a ship yard, repair yard, marina, yacht club, sales agency, delivery contractor or similar organisation
Topsail Yacht and Motor Boat policy, Section 2, clause 4.2, Version BW1 dated June 2026, read 26 August 2026. The Navigators and General wording, Version 7, December 2024, carries the same clause in the same words.
Two wordings, one gap, and your business is standing in it
Put the two halves together and the picture is uncomfortable in a way no marine trade page in this market states. The boat owner's policy stops answering while their boat is in your custody or control. A public liability policy answers for other people's property but not for property in your care, custody or control. Between the two sits the boat on your hardstanding, in your workshop, on your trailer, or under your rig. The care, custody and control extension is the thing built to sit in that space, and a trade insured on a general commercial combined policy without it does not find out until the day it matters.
There is a second distinction inside the same gap, and it is the one that separates this page from a marina page. A boat that is craned, blocked and stored is in your custody. A boat that is in the workshop for a job is in your custody and being worked on, so two different things can go wrong: you can drop it, and you can build the fault into it. Those are answered by different parts of a programme, and the next two sections take them one at a time.
If your business is the yard itself rather than the trade working in it, storage, berthing and lifting for boats you hold, then marina insurance is the page written for the premises operator, and it takes the same exposure from the storage and lifting side. It is written for a United States operator, so read the boundary on this page before you use it.
If a customer's boat is damaged in your yard, are you liable?
Usually only if you were at fault, but the duty you are measured against is a statutory one and it is not a low bar. A business supplying a service owes a term of reasonable care and skill by statute, and a bailee who lets goods in its keeping be lost or destroyed in breach of its duty can be sued in conversion.
Where your customer is another business, the implied term is section 13 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982: In a relevant contract for the supply of a service where the supplier is acting in the course of a business, there is an implied term that the supplier will carry out the service with reasonable care and skill. Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, section 13 Where your customer is a private boat owner, that same duty moved in October 2015 to section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015: Every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill. Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 49 Most marine trades serve both kinds of customer in the same week, which is why both are here.
You are a bailee, and that is a legal position rather than a description
The moment a customer leaves their boat with you, you hold goods belonging to somebody else. The law calls that bailment, and section 2(2) of the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 says that an action lies in conversion for loss or destruction of goods which a bailee has allowed to happen in breach of his duty to his bailor. A boat is goods. Your customer is the bailor. That is the route a claim takes when a boat is destroyed in your keeping rather than merely damaged.
The at owner's risk sign does less than the yard thinks
Nearly every yard, marina and workshop in the country prints a version of the same line, that boats and gear are left at the owner's risk. Two marina groups publish theirs. One says that boats, vehicles, gear, equipment or other property are left at the marina at the owner's own risk. The other words the same clause with a carve-out on its face, applying it apart from any loss, damage or injury which results from the negligence or deliberate act of the company. The difference between those two draftings is not a style choice. It is what the following two statutes force.
Against a business customer, section 2 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 says that a person cannot by reference to any contract term or to a notice exclude or restrict his liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence, and that for other loss or damage he cannot exclude or restrict it except in so far as the term or notice satisfies the requirement of reasonableness. Subsection 3 adds that a person's agreement to or awareness of such a term is not of itself to be taken as indicating voluntary acceptance of any risk. Against a consumer, section 2 does not apply at all: subsection 4 sends those cases to sections 62 and 65 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and section 65 bars a trader excluding or restricting liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence outright, with the rest tested for fairness under section 62.
The practical reading for a marine trade is short. A notice does not decide whether you are liable. A court decides, against a statutory test, and the sign is one piece of evidence rather than the answer. So the exposure is real whatever the paperwork says, which is the argument for insuring it rather than papering it.
This is a description of published statute, not legal advice on your contract. Your terms of business are worth an hour of a solicitor's time, and that hour is cheaper than the argument it prevents.
Is a bad repair a liability claim?
Not the repair itself. Liability cover answers for damage you cause, not for the cost of doing your own work again. The extension our partner publishes is worded as consequences of faulty workmanship, and that single word consequences is where the line falls.
A boat builder, a repairer, a rigger and a marine engineer are all exposed twice over on the same job, and the two exposures land in different places:
| You damaged it | You built or repaired it badly | |
|---|---|---|
| What happened | The boat was dropped, scraped, flooded or knocked while in your hands | The work was completed and the work itself was not good enough |
| The trigger | Sudden and accidental damage to property in your care, custody or control | Breach of the statutory term of reasonable care and skill |
| Where it looks for an answer | Public liability, extended for care, custody and control | The consequences of faulty workmanship extension, and products liability once the boat leaves you |
| What is normally NOT insured either way | Your own excess and your own downtime | The cost of stripping out and redoing your own defective work |
Why the word consequences is doing all the work
Redoing your own bad job is a cost of being in business, and no liability policy is built to pay it. What a workmanship extension is built for is what the bad job then caused: the seacock that was not bedded properly and sank the boat, the rig that was tuned wrong and took the mast down, the fuel line that was not clipped and started a fire. The rework is yours. The consequences are what the extension exists for. Any trade that has argued this with an insurer already knows the distinction, and any trade that has not should go looking for it in their own schedule before they need it.
There is a third line beside those two, and it catches the trades that sell judgement rather than labour. A surveyor who misses a defect, a designer whose scantlings are wrong, a broker who describes a boat incorrectly: none of those is accidental damage and none of them is faulty workmanship on a hull. That is professional indemnity, and it is a separate cover with a separate trigger. The professional bodies treat it as compulsory even though no statute does. The International Institute of Marine Surveying states in its own code that the surveyor member shall at all times maintain in force professional indemnity insurance at a realistic level in accordance with the surveyor's work and professional status.
IIMS Small Craft Code of Practice, General Rules, read 29 August 2026. No version or date is printed on the published page.
One honest boundary on all of this. There is no marine trade policy wording in our hands. The three extensions named on this page come from our partner's published schedule for the one-person mobile product and from their marine trades product page, both read 26 August 2026, and the wider marine trade programme is negotiated account by account with a panel of specialist marine insurers. Which extensions sit on your programme, and how each is worded, is settled at quotation and printed in your own schedule. We have asked for the wording.
What does hot work do to your cover?
It moves you into the part of the policy most likely to carry a condition. Our partner lists heat work away from your premises as its own named extension, separately from public liability, because welding, cutting and grinding on somebody else's site is the case a base policy is least likely to answer for without being asked.
The Health and Safety Executive gives the working definition, and it is wider than most people expect. In its docks information sheet on hot work it says: Hot work means the use of open fires, flames and work involving the application of heat by means of tools or equipment. This includes the unintentional application of heat, for example by the use of power tools or hot rivets or hot particles from cutting or welding operations, falling onto and igniting flammable material or flammable vapours. On that definition an angle grinder is hot work. So is a heat gun on old antifoul, and so is a soldering iron in a bilge that still smells of petrol.
The fire that starts after you have gone home
Two sentences in the same HSE sheet explain why this is a separate insurance question rather than a housekeeping one. The first is that every year major fires occur due to hot particles from cutting or welding operations falling onto flammable materials. The second is the one that should decide your fire watch: many serious fires have broken out several hours after the completion of hot work. A boat is a container of wood, resin, foam, fuel and upholstery with voids running through all of it, so a spark that lands out of sight has hours to work in.
Permits, and the question of who is in charge
The same sheet says permits to work are the key to ensuring that safe hot work procedures are followed, and lists what one should generally contain: the location and nature of the hot work, the proposed time and duration, the limits of time for which the permit is valid, the precautions to be taken before, during and on completion of the work, and the person in direct control of the work. That last line is the one a mobile trade should read twice. The sheet is blunt about the failure mode: it should not be assumed that because someone else has agreed that hot work may be carried out, all necessary precautions will be taken by them, and it is essential that there is no doubt as to who has overall control of the work.
Source: HSE Docks Information Sheet No 6 (Revised), Hot work in docks, read 29 August 2026. Two caveats we would rather state than leave you to find. It is written for docks and it says on its first page that it is not intended to apply to hot work carried out in shipyards, so it is the definition and the mechanism that carry across to a boatyard rather than the regime. And an insurer's own hot work condition, if your programme carries one, is what binds you. Ask for it in writing and read what it requires of you before and after the job, not just during it.
How much public liability do you actually need?
No United Kingdom statute makes public liability compulsory for a marine trade. The people who make it compulsory are the sites you work on and the association you belong to, and the figure they publish is the figure that decides whether you can take the job.
This is the question every marine trade actually asks and no page in this market answers, because answering it means reading somebody else's terms rather than listing your own products. So here are four requirements published by four different organisations, read at source and dated. Three of them are gatekeeping: fail them and you do not get through the gate, whatever your policy says.
| Who asks | What they publish | What it gates |
|---|---|---|
| Premier Marinas, contractor access system | A copy of your public liability insurance, minimum cover £5 million, plus a written risk assessment and method statement for each type of work, and Gas Safe registration where applicable | Registration to work on their sites at all |
| boatfolk, marina terms and conditions, clause 14.4 | An up to date insurance certificate specific to the work being undertaken, which must include public liability to the value of no less than £5,000,000 | Being allowed onto a berth to do the job |
| Poole Harbour Commissioners, harbour works licence | A declaration that you hold and maintain public liability insurance with respect to the works, minimum liability £2,000,000, which may be increased at the Commissioners' discretion for larger projects | A licence for work or structures below mean high water springs |
| British Marine, Rules and Code of Practice, clause 2.1(iii) | Members must maintain adequate levels of public liability, employer's liability, occupier's liability and professional indemnity liability insurance cover applicable to their business | Membership, which the Code states is mandatory for all members |
Sources, in order: Premier Marinas contractor guide, read 29 August 2026; boatfolk terms and conditions clause 14.4, read 29 August 2026; Poole Harbour Commissioners Harbour Works Licence Application Guidelines, issued under sections 20 and 21 of the Poole Harbour Act 1914 as amended by the Poole Harbour Revision Order 2012, read 29 August 2026; British Marine Federation Rules and Code of Practice, Version 1.5, April 2025, clause 2.1(iii).
What that table means when you are choosing a limit
Two of the largest marina groups in the country publish the same number, £5 million, and they publish it as an entry requirement rather than a recommendation. A harbour authority publishes half that for works in the water, and reserves the right to ask for more. So the limit that is right for you is not the one that reads best on a schedule. It is the highest one demanded by the places you actually work, and the way to find it is to ask the two or three sites you visit most what they require before you buy, not after.
The numbers you will not find on this page
We publish no premium, no band, no percentage and no worked example for marine trade cover, and that is deliberate rather than coy. This class is rated account by account on your trades, your turnover, your premises, your claims record and the value of the boats you handle. A figure published here that turned out not to apply to your business would cost you more time than the blank does. The 1% to 1.5% of agreed value figure used elsewhere on this site is a private yacht indication on a different distribution route and describes nothing about a liability programme.
External sources on this page open in a new tab. The published requirements above are quoted from the organisations' own documents: Premier Marinas Safeworks, boatfolk terms and conditions, Poole Harbour Commissioners licence guidelines, and the British Marine Code of Practice.
Do you have to insure the people who work for you?
If you employ anybody, almost certainly yes, and it is the one cover an Act of Parliament imposes on a marine trade. The minimum is £5,000,000 for any one occurrence. Public liability is not compulsory in the United Kingdom. Employers' liability is.
Section 1 of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires every employer carrying on business in Great Britain to insure, and maintain insurance, under one or more approved policies with an authorised insurer against liability for bodily injury or disease sustained by his employees and arising out of and in the course of their employment in Great Britain. The £5 million minimum for any one occurrence is set by regulation 3 of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Regulations 1998. The Health and Safety Executive publishes the penalties in its own guide for employers: up to £2,500 for each day an employer trades uninsured, and up to £1,000 for failing to display the certificate. HSE40.
The two exemptions a small yard falls into, until it does not
A company employing only its owner, where that owner holds 50 per cent or more of the issued share capital, is generally not required to hold employers' liability. Neither is a business that is not incorporated as a company and whose employees are all close family. A great many marine trades start inside one of those two and stop being inside it the first time they take on a labourer for a busy fortnight, or a school leaver for the summer, or a friend's son to help with a lift. The exemption turns on who the person is and how the business is structured, not on how long they stay.
Worth noticing while you are here: the boat owner's own policy will not pick this up for you either. The FreeTime Pleasure Craft wording excludes from the owner's third-party liability any liability of any sort which comes under the Employers Liability Act 1969 or any other law relating to workmen, at clause 2.1.8 of the same section quoted further up this page.
Our partner publishes employers' liability among the covers it arranges on its marine trade programme, alongside public and products liability, material damage, property away from your premises, goods in transit, business interruption, builders' risk, contractors' all risk and money. That is what their marine trade product page says, read 26 August 2026. What we cannot tell you from here is whether it is on your programme and at what limit, because that is negotiated on your submission rather than sold off a shelf. If employers' liability is the cover you most need, say so in your first message and it will be the first thing quoted.
Employers' liability is jurisdictional: where your people are employed decides where it is placed. For the wider map of business types against covers, start at marine business insurance, which sets the same question against United States employment law for an operator over there.
Is this the right page for your business?
This page is for the trades that work on other people's boats and have no page of their own: boat builders, boat repairers, riggers, marine engineers, chandleries and surveyors. Several other trades on the same scheme have their own page, and they answer better than this one does.
Our partner's marine trade list runs to fifteen business types. Six of them belong here. The rest belong somewhere more specific, and sending you there in one sentence is worth more than a quote request that goes to the wrong desk.
Yes, this page
- Boat builders and boat repairers, working on hulls that belong to somebody else
- Riggers, marine engineers and electricians, mobile or from a unit
- Chandleries and parts suppliers, where products liability sits beside the shop floor
- Marine surveyors, where professional indemnity is the centre rather than the extra
- Shipwrights, sprayers, upholsterers and canvas workers
- Marine contractors, including work in the water that needs a harbour authority licence
No, one of these
You are a one-person mobile trade
No employees, no premises, working from home, on customers' boats. There is a separate product with a published six-point eligibility test you can check yourself in half a minute. See mobile marine tradesman insurance.
You operate the marina, boatyard or storage yard itself
Berthing, hardstanding, lifting and storage for boats you hold rather than work you carry out. That is the operator's exposure and it has its own page at marina insurance, written for a United States operator.
You run a charter fleet
Boats you own and put in other people's hands for money. Start at charter company insurance.
You hire boats out to the public
A livery or rental operation is a different exposure again, because the person at the helm is a stranger. See boat rental insurance.
Your boat is the business
A workboat, a pilot boat, an angling charter or a survey boat up to 40 ft, working to 12 nautical miles. That is hull and liability on the vessel rather than liability on a trade. See commercial boat insurance.
You are a sailing school or a training centre
Teaching is advice, and advice gets challenged, so instructor professional indemnity leads that submission rather than follows it. That is sailing school insurance, which is not published yet. The hub below carries the cover map in the meantime.
You are a yacht club, a sailing club or an association
Volunteers and race officers are not employees, which changes the employers' answer, and a club committee carries exposures a trade does not. That is yacht club insurance, which is written but not published yet. Say it is a club in your message and the submission still reaches the right desk.
You are a boat dealer or a yacht broker
Sales, brokerage and sea trials put prospects aboard boats you do not own, and stock on your own forecourt is a property question rather than a liability one. That is boat dealer insurance, which is not published yet either.
For the full map of business types against covers, including which cover each type most often forgets, start at the marine business insurance hub.
What the marine trade programme actually is
It is not a packaged product off a rate table. It is a programme built for the activities you actually carry out and negotiated with a panel of specialist marine insurers, which is why this page publishes no premium and no limit.
The trades the programme is written for
As published: associations, boat builders, boat repairers, boat dealers, boatyards, chandleries, charities, charter companies, marinas, riggers, sailing and yacht clubs, sailing schools, surveyors, marine tradesmen and marine engineers.
The covers it arranges
As published: material damage, property away from your premises, goods in transit, exhibitions, marine equipment, builders' risk, business interruption, money, employers' liability, public and products liability, and contractors' all risk. Alongside those, on the schedule for the one-person mobile version of the same trade, sit the four additional liability covers this page is built around: third party vessels in your care, custody or control, movement of third party owned vessels, consequences of faulty workmanship, and heat work away from your premises.
Sources: the partner's marine trade product pages and the mobile marine tradesmen schedule, all read 26 August 2026. These are published product pages rather than policy wordings. There is no marine trade policy wording in our hands and this page does not pretend otherwise, which is why every cover above is described as arranged rather than guaranteed, and why no limit appears beside any of them.
Where this reaches, and where it does not
This is a United Kingdom and European product line, written for a business in the UK marine industry. A United States resident enquiry is outside it, and we would rather say that on your first visit than on your third email. The London market route used elsewhere on this site places private and commercial yacht hull business worldwide, and it is a different route with a different reach; a marine trade liability programme is not on it.
How this cover is arranged
World Yacht Insurance is an introducer. We do not insure anything, we carry no risk, and we do not set your premium or decide your claim. We pass your details to the firm that arranges the cover, and they quote you.
This page is written from documents rather than from brochures. Six pieces of legislation read on legislation.gov.uk, a Health and Safety Executive information sheet, four published insurance requirements from two marina groups, a harbour authority and a trade association, and two leisure policy wordings we hold and quote by clause. Every figure carries the document it came from and the date it was read.
Where we could not evidence something, it says so. There is no marine trade policy wording in our hands, so the cover list and the four additional liability covers are attributed to our partner's published pages and dated, and we have asked for the wording. No premium, no band and no limit appear anywhere on this page, because none has been evidenced for this product and an invented one would cost you more than the blank does.
Nothing on this page is financial or legal advice. Statutes are amended, codes are revised and site requirements change without notice. The only documents that bind you are your own contract, your own policy schedule and your own policy wording.
Reviewed by Costas Matheou, licensed insurance agent (Cyprus), ICCS certificate 6882. Last reviewed 29 August 2026.
Marine trade insurance questions
Does public liability insurance cover a customer's boat while I am working on it?+
Not on its own. Property in your own care, custody or control is the classic carve-out from a liability policy, which is why our partner's published schedule lists legal liability for third party vessels in your care, custody or control as a named extension, under a separate heading from the public liability limit itself. The half most trades have never seen is that the boat owner's policy does not fill the gap either. The FreeTime Pleasure Craft wording excludes the owner's own third-party liability at clause 2.1.10 whilst the craft is in the custody or control of shipyard, repair yard, slipway, yacht club or marina operators, delivery skippers or sales agencies, and the Topsail Yacht and Motor Boat policy excludes it at Section 2 clause 4.2. So the cover has to come from your side.
Is marine trade insurance a legal requirement in the UK?+
No United Kingdom statute makes public liability insurance compulsory for a marine trade. Employers' liability is different: section 1 of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires almost every employer carrying on business in Great Britain to hold it, at a minimum of £5,000,000 for any one occurrence under regulation 3 of the 1998 Regulations. In practice the sites you work on impose public liability whether the law does or not. Two of the largest UK marina groups both publish £5,000,000 as the minimum a contractor must evidence before being allowed to work.
How much public liability does a marine trade actually need?+
There is no statutory answer, so the working answer is the highest figure demanded by the places you work. Premier Marinas requires a copy of your public liability insurance at minimum cover £5 million to register on its contractor access system, along with a written risk assessment and method statement for each type of work and Gas Safe registration where applicable. boatfolk's terms and conditions require public liability of no less than £5,000,000 at clause 14.4. Poole Harbour Commissioners require a minimum of £2,000,000 for a harbour works licence, which may be increased at their discretion. Ask the two or three sites you visit most what they require before you buy, not after.
Does public liability cover me if my own work turns out to be faulty?+
Not for the cost of doing the work again. That is a cost of being in business and no liability policy is built to pay it. What the extension is built for is what the defective work then caused, which is why our partner words it as consequences of faulty workmanship. The seacock that was not bedded properly and sank the boat, the rig that took the mast down, the fuel line that started a fire: the rework is yours, the consequences are what the extension exists for. A surveyor's or a designer's mistake is a third thing again, answered by professional indemnity rather than by either of those.
What is the difference between marine trade insurance and marina insurance?+
Which side of the boat you are on. Marina insurance answers for the operator who holds other people's boats: berthing, hardstanding, lifting and storage, on premises they run. Marine trade insurance answers for the business that works on those boats, whether from its own unit or in somebody else's yard, and its extra exposure is the work itself rather than the storage. A yard that lifts a boat and then repairs it touches both. Our marina page is written for a United States operator, so read the territory boundary on this page before you use it.
What does marine trade insurance cost?+
We publish no premium and no band for it, because a marine trade programme is rated account by account rather than off a table. What moves it is the trades you actually carry out, whether you have premises, how many people you employ, the value of the boats you handle, whether you do heat work and where, your claims record, and the limit of indemnity the sites you work on require you to hold. Any figure published on a page before those are known would be a number you could not rely on. Send us the detail and you get terms in writing rather than a range.
Tell us what you work on, and where
Send the trades you carry out, whether you have premises, how many people you employ, the largest boat you handle and the sites you work on. If a marina has told you a figure it needs to see, send that too, because it decides the limit we ask for. UK marine industry.
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