A charter security deposit is the base's cover for damage between check-out and check-in. YACHT notes that it usually matches the excess on the yacht's hull insurance, so it's the amount the operator would otherwise pay itself after a claim. Most deposit disputes come down to one question: was the damage there before the charter started?
How much
YACHT's figures for a typical week:
| Charter | Deposit |
|---|---|
| Three-cabin yacht, Mediterranean | €3,000 to €3,500 |
| Large yacht or catamaran | €4,000 to €5,000 |
| Caribbean and overseas | €6,000 to €9,000 |
Demanding areas such as Sardinia and Corsica, and the Caribbean hurricane season, push it up. YACHT flags one warning sign in a contract: a clause saying the deposit may differ from the hull insurance excess. The Moorings takes its deposit before embarkation, in the local currency of the base.
Waivers and deposit insurance
There are two ways to cut the exposure, and they work differently.
The operator's own waiver or deposit reduction. The charterer pays a fee and leaves a smaller deposit at the base. YACHT puts the remaining deposit usually between €200 and €500, for a fee usually between €50 and €70 a day. The Moorings' damage waiver is a prepayment that isn't refunded at the end of the charter. Without it, The Moorings says the charterer is liable up to the value of the security deposit, except in the case of negligence, where its claim isn't limited by the deposit or the waiver.
Third-party deposit insurance. The charterer buys a policy from an insurer such as Pantaenius, Yacht-Pool or Hamburger Yachtversicherung, still leaves the full deposit at the base, and claims it back after the trip, less an excess. YACHT notes that most insurers reimburse whether the deposit was rightly or wrongly withheld. Filovent says some large operators, naming Sunsail, The Moorings and Dream Yacht Charter, don't accept third-party insurance and sell their own package instead.
What's usually excluded
Filovent lists the exclusions charterers meet most often:
- Equipment simply lost, such as a winch handle dropped overboard.
- Spinnakers, gennakers, code zeros and other light-wind sails. The mainsail and standard furling genoa are covered.
- The dinghy and outboard, such as an engine dropped in the water or a punctured tube.
- Theft, gross negligence, alcohol, sailing in prohibited zones or weather, and damage from poor use on board, such as a blocked toilet or an engine run without oil.
YACHT adds that some policies in Italy exclude groundings from the deposit settlement, and that blocked holding tanks, a dirty boat or one returned without full tanks often lead to deductions that insurance doesn't always cover.
Settling a claim at the base
Filovent's advice to charterers is to check every deduction at the base and ask for a written, detailed damage report: what's damaged, the amount withheld and photos. Keep it with the charter invoice, the waiver certificate, your own before and after photos and the record of the deposit withheld, and send the claim to the insurer promptly, which Filovent says is generally within 5 working days of returning.
What protects the base, and the charterer
A deduction holds up when the check-out record shows the boat was clean and undamaged where the new damage is, and the check-in record shows the damage, located and photographed, before anything is moved. That's the job of the charter handover checklist, with the skipper walking round and both signatures, and of the charter damage report at check-in. For rental fleets, the rental boat inspection checklist does the same for shorter hires.
With Axsail the base team walks the boat with the skipper and says what they see. Each item lands on the boat's list with its photo and the time it was recorded, so the check-in can be compared with the check-out item by item. See Fleet and charter for all the operator checklists.