insurance claim - loss of boat use

[blueglass]

having just suffered an expensive collision in my boat out here in Greece which was in no way my fault, the boat is now out of commision pending repairs. A chartered cateraman dragged its anchor in the night and fell back onto our bows and smashed up our guardrails and made a fine mess of our gelcoat. Both skipper of the cat and the charter company have verbally accepted liability and it appears the the repairs will (eventually) be sorted out at no expense to me. My questionis however - can I claim for the loss of use of my boat while repairs are put in hand. Anybody successfully done this and how? How do I quantify the loss?

 

[jhr]

I asked this question recently and received the following reply from my legal insurer:

Loss of use is calculated on the pre-incident value of the boat multiplied by 2% above the current High Court rate of 1%, ie 3%, giving you the annual loss of use figure. This figure should be pro rated for the number of days in season that the boat was out of use...... The loss of use claim can never be granted and can always be disputed

This is in the UK, but I guess it would be a reasonable starting point for a claim anywhere.

Hope this helps.

 

[blueglass]

I asked this question recently and received the following reply from my legal insurer:



This is in the UK, but I guess it would be a reasonable starting point for a claim anywhere.

Hope this helps.

that's a useful formula thanks - have just applied it and came up with a disapointingly low figure, though. boat is worth around 150K x 3% =£4,500 or £12.32 a day. With say 5 weeks of the season left = £431.00 total. I value my time on the boat rather more than that, but hey ho. A fairer system might have been based on the charter cost of getting a suitable exchange boat which would cost many times that.
Im a bit peeved at the situation as you may have gathered. We had to come back into the marina a week early to sort out al the quotes etc, losing a week's holiday time and will probably have to cancel plans for our October cruise entirely - for which I stand to get £430 if I am lucky.

 

[jhr]

I agree, the amount is quite small - it's even less on my boat . The problem, I guess, is that it's being used to calculate the general loss of an amenity, rather than the specific cost of replacing your boat with a charter craft for a certain period of time. However, there's nothing to say that you can't use charter costs as an alternative means of calculating a compensation figure - or at least a starting point for negotiation.

The only danger of this is that they might - and I stress, might - argue that you should be making a claim on your holiday insurance under those circumstances.....

 

[blueglass]

Whatever I come up with - they will chip me down so I better start high and leave room for manouvre.
Good luck with your own claim!