The bill that lands after a claim is almost never the number you remember from the policy schedule. I learned this the dull way, on a pontoon in Saint-Raphael, after a neighbour's gangway came adrift in a blow and put a long scrape down my topsides. The repair quote was 4,200 euros. My excess was 750. I thought I would be out 750. I was out closer to 1,900 once the dust settled, and the policy itself cost me more the following year. Working out why is the most useful hour you can spend before you ever need to claim.
Flat excess versus percentage excess
The first thing to check on your schedule is whether your excess is a fixed figure or a percentage of the insured value, because they behave very differently.
A flat excess is simple: a fixed amount, say 500 or 750 euros, that you pay on any claim before the insurer pays the rest. A percentage excess is calculated on the agreed hull value, and that is where the surprises live. A 1% deductible on a boat insured for 120,000 euros is 1,200 euros. A 2% deductible on the same boat is 2,400. Many policies carry 1% to 3% on the hull, and lenders often cap the maximum a finance deal will allow at around 2% of the insured value.
So two boats with identical-looking cover can face wildly different out-of-pocket sums on the same dent, depending on which model the underwriter wrote. Read which one you have. A percentage excess on a high-value boat can swallow a five-figure repair before the insurer contributes anything.
Special excesses you did not notice
Beyond the headline excess sit a layer of higher, situation-specific ones. These are where claims quietly become expensive.
- Grounding and engine damage frequently carry their own enhanced excess.
- Named-storm or weather-event clauses can apply a separate, larger deductible.
- Rig and mast losses are often excepted or excessed differently from the hull.
- Tender and outboard theft commonly sit under a sub-limit with its own excess and a security condition you may not have met.
- Single-handed or short-handed passage clauses can reduce cover or raise the excess on offshore legs.
Charter is a world of its own. If you have ever taken a French bareboat, you know the security deposit. Even with a damage waiver, an amount between 350 and 500 euros typically stays payable by the charterer for any incident, and the waiver itself costs between 4% and 8% of the charter price depending on the sailing area. That is a useful reference for what insurers really think a "small" claim costs to handle. The same logic surfaces if you ever go the other way and earn money from your own boat: a private policy will not cover a paying charter at all, which I get into in the piece on letting your boat in France and the charter tax. Hand the boat over for cash under a pleasure policy and a claim during that charter is simply refused.
The premium hike is the part nobody budgets for
Here is the cost that does not appear on any single document. A claim follows you. Multiple claims within three to five years can push your premium up by 10% to 30% at renewal, and in the worst case the insurer simply declines to renew. A loss of no-claims standing can outlast the repair by years.
Run the maths on my Saint-Raphael scrape. Excess of 750. Add a 20% premium rise on an 1,100-euro policy, which is 220 a year, and assume it sticks for three years before I claw the discount back: that is 660. Already I am at 1,410 in real cost on a claim where the visible excess was 750. Throw in a day lost dealing with the yard and the loss adjuster and you see why I now think twice about claiming for anything I could absorb myself.
This is the calculation worth doing before every small claim. If the repair is 1,300 euros and your excess is 750, you are claiming 550 of actual benefit, and a single year's premium rise can wipe that out. Below a certain threshold, paying cash and keeping a clean record is the cheaper move.
There is a softer cost on top of the hard numbers. Loss adjusters take time. A topsides repair that a yard could turn around in three days can stretch to a fortnight once the insurer wants quotes, photographs and sign-off, and a fortnight of a high-season berth gone, or a charter week cancelled, is money you will never see itemised. For anyone running tight to a weather window or a fixed cruising plan, the delay can cost more than the dent. I now treat any claim under roughly two thousand euros as a question of whether the disruption and the premium hit are worth the payout, not whether I am "entitled" to claim. Entitlement is not the same as advantage.
Foreign-flagged boats: where cover gets thin
If you are cruising France on a UK, Dutch or other foreign-flagged boat, check that your policy actually covers the cruising area, the laid-up period and any single-handed legs. Cover written for home waters can quietly exclude an extended French season. I went through this in detail in my guide to insurance for a foreign-flagged boat cruising France, and the short version is that a cheap premium with a tight geographic limit is no bargain when the limit is the thing that voids your claim.
There is a liability dimension too. Third-party cover is effectively compulsory to take a berth in most French marinas, so the question is never whether to insure but how much excess and exclusion you are quietly carrying. The minimum the marinas care about is the civil-liability cover for damage you might do to others, but that bare layer does nothing for your own hull. Plenty of visitors arrive with cover that satisfies the capitainerie and leaves their own boat half-protected, then discover the gap only when their own topsides take the hit.
The laid-up period is the other classic foreign-flagged trap. If you winter the boat in a French yard or marina, the policy needs to know, because cover and excess often change between the cruising season and the lay-up. A storm-damage claim during an undeclared winter, or with the wrong named-storm excess applied, is the kind of five-figure surprise that makes a year of saved premium look like a poor trade.
Reduce the cost before the claim, not after
The levers that actually move your total cost are mostly in your hands.
- Match the excess to your appetite. A higher voluntary excess lowers the premium, but only take it if you can genuinely absorb that figure without claiming.
- Get the security conditions right: the right locks, the right outboard chain, the alarm the policy specifies. A theft claim refused on a security clause is the most avoidable loss there is.
- Photograph the boat and gear each season and keep receipts, so an agreed-value settlement does not become an argument.
- Tell the insurer the truth about laid-up dates and cruising plans. A claim during an undeclared period is a claim refused.
When the boat is in France for good
The picture shifts again if you base the boat permanently in France, or sell it there. French buyers and brokers will want to see clean documentation, and an unresolved claim history can knock the price. If a sale is on the horizon, my notes on selling a boat in France through brokers and the tax cover how the paperwork interacts with everything else.
The honest summary is this. The excess on your schedule is the floor, not the ceiling. The real cost of a claim is that figure, plus the special excesses you forgot you had, plus three years of a fatter premium. Knowing the full number is what lets you decide, calmly and in advance, which claims are worth making and which you quietly swallow.
