Boat Storage Contract Liability: What a Boatyard's Terms Do to Your Own Cover

What is boat storage contract liability?

Whose insurance pays when your boat goes over on stands in a boatyard?

Your own hull cover answers first, subject to your deductible. Whether anyone then recovers from the yard is a separate question, and it is decided by two documents: the storage agreement you signed and the conditions inside your own policy.

That split catches owners out because the yard is the visible party. The boat was in the yard's hands, the yard set it on stands, and the yard is the one still there when you arrive after the storm. But your hull section does not ask whose fault it was before it responds, and your liability section, which is the part that deals with other people, is where the storage contract starts to bite.

Where the damage comes from a named windstorm, the deductible on the wording we work from is 10% of the hull value shown in the Schedule, and it applies where a signed and dated hurricane plan has been agreed by underwriters before cover is granted. The figure and the condition travel together. A plan is not paperwork you file afterwards.

Two related questions belong on other pages. What hauling out does to theft cover and to a lay-up warranty is covered in the guide to where to leave your boat for the season. Which policy clauses change the moment the boat comes out of the water is set out as a clause table on the haul-out and refuge tool.

We hold the policy wording, which is why the answers below quote the clause that applies instead of describing the market in general. This is general information, not financial or legal advice.

Is a boatyard really never liable for an act of God?

What does a yard's hold-harmless do to your own liability cover?

The liability section of the wording we work from excludes “Liability assumed by you under any contract or agreement”. A liability you incur at law and a liability you took on by signing are treated differently, and only one of them is supported.

The Nanny Cay Master Agreement and Work Order, the document a boat owner signs in Tortola, says: “The Owner will hold the company harmless for any damage that may occur due to types of lifting used by the Company either in the Boat Hoist, Crane or by Yard Trailer and also by the method of supporting the vessel whilst in the yard (choking, etc.).”

So the owner signs away the securing method, which is the one thing a hurricane plan is written to describe, and the owner's own liability section does not stand behind what was assumed by signing it. The medical payments section carries the same restriction in different words, excluding responsibility assumed under any agreement or contract.

The stem above the exclusion list changes what the list does. The exclusions open “Unless agreed by us in writing prior to any loss”. That is not a wall. It is a door with a condition on it. An owner who sends the yard's indemnity clause to underwriters in May, before anything has happened, is doing exactly what the wording contemplates. An owner who sends it in October, after the boat is on its side, is not.

A Florida law firm quotes the same exclusion verbatim in a paper written for marina counsel, so this is standard market wording. What we have not seen set out anywhere is what it does to a boatyard storage contract, where the assumed obligation reaches the blocking and the straps. The same exclusion, read against a marina berth agreement, is set out in the guide to med mooring damage and your deductible.

What does the yard's contract switch off, and what does your policy switch off?

Does signing the yard's waiver of subrogation cost you your claim?

On the wording we work from, no. It can reduce what is paid, by the amount of the recovery that was given up, and only where the waiver was given without underwriters' agreement.

The best-published answer to this question says something stronger. Writing in The Log, David Weil explains that a yard waiver impairs the insurer's subrogation rights and so “amounts to a breach of the insurance policy by the boat owner, which will result in a denial of the claim”. That describes the general market pattern, and other wordings do work that way. We are reporting what one wording says, not correcting a lawyer.

Three things follow from that wording. The consequence is a reduction rather than a denial, so the rest of the claim survives. The reduction is measured by what was actually forfeited, so a waiver that was never going to produce a recovery, because the yard had a watertight act-of-God clause anyway, costs nothing. And the whole condition turns on the words “without our agreement”, which means agreement obtained first removes the problem entirely. The matching duty, that you must preserve your rights of recovery from others, is published in the guide to med mooring damage and your deductible.

The principle itself is not unusual. In three of the four European markets we measured, reduction instead of denial is a matter of statute rather than contract. What has not been published anywhere we could find is where it lives on this wording, and that is what an owner holding this policy actually needs to know. Maritime firms add that a waiver clause standing alone is often not enough to waive a carrier's subrogation interests unless the carrier itself consents, which points the same way: ask.

Can your policy name the boatyard as an additional insured?

Not automatically, and the reason sits in the policy rather than in the contract. Condition 23 of the wording we work from provides that neither the insuring agreement nor any document issued with it confers any benefit on any third party, and condition 24 excludes the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 outright.

So a promise in a storage agreement to name the yard is not self-executing. It needs an endorsement, asked for and agreed, and until that happens the owner has promised something the policy does not deliver. If the yard later relies on that promise and finds nothing behind it, the owner can be personally answerable for the difference.

Brais Law reaches the same result from the other side of the counter, noting that the policy it analyses excludes marinas from the definition of covered person and carries a “No Benefit to Others” clause providing that no organisation which has custody of the insured property and is to be paid for services will benefit from the insurance. Two different wordings, one result.

At least one yard will not start work at all without proof of cover: Clarke's Court in Grenada states that no vessel will be accepted for haul-out without proof of the required insurance, and lists the documents it wants before the lift. And where a yard's terms say you may not cancel or change cover while the boat is ashore, that is a contract term rather than an insurance term, which is a reason to read your cancellation clause before you book the lift.

Who is in charge when the travel lift picks up your boat?

On the contracts we read, you are, and the policy has nothing to say about it. Across both London Marine documents we hold, the words lift, sling, hoist, crane, chock, block and ashore appear nowhere at all. Hauling out and launching appear in three sentences, all three of them exclusions. Two are scoped to a vessel being moved on its own trailer. The third switches medical payments off for anyone injured while a vessel is being hauled out or launched. Not one of the three says who is in charge of the operation, and not one of them asks anything at all of the yard.

The wording is silent on who runs the lift. That is different from excluding it, and more useful, because silence means the document that governs the operation is the one you signed at the office.

Those documents are blunter than most owners expect. Clarke's Court states that “The Owner is responsible for directing the placement of lifting slings, docking lines, chocking positions and placements and hereby agrees to their proper placement”, and declines liability for damage resulting from chocking placement. Nanny Cay asks the owner to “provide us with manufacturer's blocking instructions for the vessel if possible” and to “advise us on the position of the straps when hauling”, and its hold-harmless then covers the lifting method and the method of supporting the vessel in the yard.

The securing arrangement the owner is directing is the same arrangement a signed hurricane plan describes to underwriters, and the same arrangement the hold-harmless makes the owner answerable for. One set of straps and chocks, three documents, and the owner is the only party named in all three.

Directing is not the same as controlling. Clarke's Court reserves the moving of chocks, ties, stands and cradles to yard personnel. Nanny Cay reserves the right to move a vessel's chocked position “without consultation or presence of the owner or his representative”. An owner can specify where the straps go and still have no say in what happens at two in the morning. For the policy clauses that do change when a boat comes out of the water, including the one about medical payments during haul-out, see what hauling out changes in your policy.

What do five named boatyards actually put in writing?

Does Florida's marina evacuation law reach a boat on stands in a boatyard?

Yes, where the facility meets the statutory definition, and the reason it is not obvious is that you have to read two sections to see it.

Florida statute 327.59 is headed “Marina evacuations”, and its operative language is about slips, waters and removing vessels from waterways, so it reads like a statute about boats afloat. But statute 327.02 defines the terms used across the whole of chapter 327, and at subsection (26) it defines “marina” as “a licensed commercial facility that provides secured public moorings or dry storage for vessels on a leased basis”. Dry storage is inside the definition. A Florida boatyard that meets it is a marina for these purposes.

Two limits come with that. The definition needs a licensed commercial facility providing storage on a leased basis, so a yard that stores under a work order rather than a lease may sit outside it. And the definition section opens with “unless the context clearly requires a different meaning”, which is precisely the argument the slip-and-waterway language of 327.59 would support. The definition points one way and the context argument points the other.

The statute holds a marina harmless for storm damage to a vessel in respect of the securing and removing it permits, expressly excluding intentional acts and negligence. The yard's contract disclaims act-of-God damage outright. And your own liability section excludes what you assumed by signing. Three documents, all pushing the loss in the same direction. The broad version of the statutory point, that Florida marinas are not liable for storm damage, is not what the section says. The hold-harmless is tied to the actions the section permits. This is Florida law applied to a Florida facility, a worked example of how one jurisdiction allocates a loss, and it does not travel with the boat.

The clocks do not line up either. The National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane watch 48 hours before it expects tropical-storm-force winds and a hurricane warning at 36 hours, which is when 327.59 engages, while Clarke's Court asks for a vessel to be off its dock 24 hours before a named system arrives. Your own cover runs on a fourth clock: named-windstorm cover is subject to a condition precedent, a signed and dated hurricane plan agreed by underwriters before cover is granted, and the deductible is 10% of the hull value where that plan has been agreed. How that deductible works is covered in the named-windstorm deductible explained, and the plan itself can be built and signed with the hurricane plan generator.

What should you settle before you sign the storage contract?

Five things, and all five are easier in May than in October.

1. 1Read the indemnity clause and the waiver of subrogation before you sign, not after the storm. They are the two clauses that reach your own policy.
2. 2Put anything you are being asked to assume to underwriters in writing, before any loss. The exclusion list says “unless agreed by us in writing prior to any loss”, and that sentence is the whole cure.
3. 3Settle who directs the lift and the chocking, and get the answer in the file. On two of the five contracts we read, that person is you.
4. 4Ask whether an additional-insured endorsement is needed and whether it is available, instead of promising one the policy cannot deliver.
5. 5Get the hurricane plan signed and agreed before the season, because it is a condition precedent rather than a formality. You can build and sign one with the hurricane plan generator.

This page has deliberately not argued whether straps beat pins, or welded stands beat jackstands. It is a real question with a real answer, and the answer changes outcomes. BoatUS's Hurricane Center reports that at one named Florida marina in Hurricane Wilma, 33 of 506 boats ashore blew over when anchors pulled out, while at another yard none of 56 boats went over in two earlier storms. What a plan has to be able to demonstrate about a place is set out in which hurricane holes insurers accept, and which yards publish a strap-or-pin answer at all is in the haul-out yard directory. This page is about the document they hand you when you get there.

One question this page does not answer, because it deserves its own: what happens to wreck removal once a boat leaves the stands and has to be lifted off something, or out of something. That is a separate head of cover with its own limit, and it is worth asking about separately.

This is general information, not financial or legal advice. What your own policy does is decided by your wording and your Schedule, and what your yard's contract does is decided by the contract you sign.