Other Services

Other advice and consultation services

Damage Surveys

It is unfortunate but the unexpected does happen and your vessel may be damaged in an accident and you need to make a claim on your insurance. What do you do? The first thing you should do is inform your insurance company and then call Anchor Marine Surveys to survey the damage and provide you with a written report and a repair schedule supporting any insurance claim, after which we will assist you through the repair process so that your vessel is repaired to the condition prior to the accident.

It is a fact that insurance companies always try and minimise the claim and it is part or our job to make sure that they don’t cut corners. We can quote one client who had a drifting fishing boat damage the bow of his boat. He didn’t employ a surveyor thinking that his insurance company would put things right directly with the local boat yard. All appeared to go smoothly and the insurance company settled things directly with the boat yard a few months later. It wasn’t until a year later when he came to sell his boat that the purchaser’s surveyor found that a large area of the laminate around the damaged area was delaminating with an estimated repair cost of between eight to ten thousand pounds. He obviously lost the sale and was very shocked; he approached the boat yard about the problem and they said that they had reported this to the insurance company at the time of the repair and that they sent down their own assessor who gave them a repair schedule which ignored the delamination and only covered the local cosmetic repairs. The owner then went back to the insurance company who said the previous claim had been settled in full and the work was confirmed satisfactory by himself when collecting the boat from the repairers and he couldn’t claim twice on the same incident. To conclude, not employing a surveyor to act on his behalf had left him with a boat that had a market value before the accident of £24,000 which was now worth £15,000 which he was unlikely to sell.

Therefore it is strongly advised that you consult a surveyor to act on your behalf during an accident damage claim.

Overseeing Osmosis Treatment

The treatment of high levels of mositure absorbed by a GRP craft’s hull laminate is one of the most talked about issues we have with boat owners. Often we survey boats where the hulls have been overcoated with an epoxy barrier coat and are showing osmotic blistering. In most cases this is because the epoxy barrier coat was applied to an unprepared high moisture retained laminate by the owner who was totally unaware of the consequences. We offer a complete advice service to oversee the correct procedure to be carried out on each individual craft with regard to the application of a moisture barrier coat or to rectify a craft with existing osmosis blistering. We can also protect you from the unscrupulous boat yard doing excessive work to pump up the bill for no benefit to the vessel.

General Advice

If you have any questions about problems relating to your craft’s structural integrity or safety please feel free to call us. We don’t charge for an initial consultation call and its better to be safe then sorry, however if a site visit is required or a report written, we do charge fees based on a time basis

Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) Coding

All commercially operated craft require to be coded and certificated for the type of commercial use they are being used for. We can assist you through the process with the YDSA certifying authority.