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FINANCING, VALUATION & INSURANCE As Siches learnt to his cost, check the insurance coverage for your motor vehicle; it may not be protected at a marina. boatyard). They are included in the concession and thus also suffer from the end date but are often appointed a remnant value. Valuing a marina also involves nontraditional factors such as visual impact, community feeling, event traditions and integration with the local community. Community feeling is about happily belonging to a group. Integration with the local community is recognising the use of part of the local territory, helping local people to get to know the nautical community, and demolishing as many cultural and emotional barriers as possible. Berth occupation must be calculated at 5% below actual levels. This is to be on the safe side and cover for bad seasons, new marinas opening close by or any other unforeseen circumstances. Boatyards cannot be underestimated. An appropriate size boatyard providing basic services (haul out, bottom clean, antifouling paint and mechanical repairs) contributes up to 25% of a marina’s turnover, and it is a desirable service everywhere. When making a valuation, the expected lifetime of the marina elements has to be taken into consideration, and designers and builders must take this into account at build time. Why install concrete floating pontoons with an expected life of 50 years if your concession is for 30 years? Nowadays, I think that a marina - any marina - needs a refit every eight to ten years. Why? Because boats change (and demand more power), people use boats in different ways and technical advances in marina systems make managers run facilities in different, often safer, ways. The logistics must frequently accompany the changes. Insurance At the AMM course for future CMMs near Annapolis in 2006, Dennis Nixon - one of the gurus of maritime insurance in the USA – focused on some real life cases, explaining Disaster happens. If you can be seen to have done your best to avoid damage, your insurance policy should pay out. that some of the law applied today was from 1850. He ended his lecture with a very strong statement: “If a judge is convinced that you have done everything in your power to avoid the damage, the ruling will be in your favour”. Yes, because we cannot foresee 100% of a bad situation and act to neutralise it. There are just too many variables. The fact is that in most countries there is insufficient data to evaluate risks at marinas. And insurance runs on risk evaluation and data. To have logs for various marina operations, accidents and correction measures will always help an insurance auditor. The other very important document to show an insurance company is the emergency and safety plan, where all possible sources of accidents, inside and outside the marina, are defined and evaluated. It includes guests, boats, boatyard, spills, fire, medical emergency, nearby buildings, air pollution, and escape procedures, and leaves very little scope for unmentioned risks. The plan also includes the actions that personnel or guests should take and procedures to implement on site (heart massage). It needs to be upgraded every 1-2 years. An insurance company, knowing that the emergency and safety plan is implemented, also knows that the possibility of an accident with serious consequences is very remote, and will be able to adjust its fees to the benefit of the marina. Customers should be made aware of the exact coverage offered by the marina’s insurance. Is the boatyard included? The restaurant? The fuel pontoon? What about leaving your boat unattended but connected to electricity? The dockmaster should talk to clients to make sure they are aware of the reach of the marina insurance as, after the accident, the will to understand the situation disappears. In 2014, my car fell in the water in one of our marinas. Two days later I was told that the insurance did not cover damage at ports or airports. It cost me a diver, a crane and the total loss of my car. Every last cent you spend on risk prevention will save you money on an insurance policy or in the event of a claim. Oscar Siches CMM runs the consultancy firm Marina Matters in Mallorca, Spain. He can be contacted on email: oscar@ siches.com www.marinaworld.com - September/October 2016 53
