The businesses that keep boats in the water.
Dealers, marinas, and repair yards run on risks that standard commercial policies have never met. We've been placing them since 1990 — from a desk that sits on the Pacific.
Marine trades insurance covers the businesses that sell, store, and service boats. A typical programme combines commercial property and liability with marine-specific coverages: dealers carry open-lot inventory and sea-trial liability; marinas carry Marina Operators Legal Liability (MOLL), fuel dock pollution, and dock and pier property; repair yards carry Ship Repairers Legal Liability (SRLL) and hot-works cover. Businesses with employees working on or over the water usually also need USL&H (Longshore) coverage alongside state workers' compensation.
Everyone insures the boat. Almost nobody properly insures the businesses around it — the dealer whose inventory floats, the marina holding two hundred customers' pride and joy, the yard that welds beside a fuel tank before breakfast. Marine trades live in the gap between commercial insurance and marine insurance, and that gap is exactly where we work.
The problem with that gap is that generalist agents insure a marina like a parking lot and a boatyard like an auto shop. Then the first claim arrives — a customer's boat dropped from a travel lift, a demo ride that ends on the rocks, a fire that started in your paint shed and finished in someone else's flybridge — and the wording that looked fine at renewal decides everything. We place marine trades programmes with underwriters who know the difference, and we read the documents your business actually runs on: your slip agreements, your work orders, your floor-plan covenants.
Your inventory floats. Your test drives have no seatbelts. Your biggest sales weekend is a tent on a dock.
A boat dealership is three businesses wearing one policy: a retailer with millions in floating, trailered, and racked inventory; a demonstration operation that hands the helm to strangers; and a logistics company moving hulls between lot, show, ramp, and delivery skipper. Each has its own failure mode. Hail on an open lot, a sea trial that clips a channel marker, a new owner's first docking that becomes your completed-operations claim — dealer programmes have to price all of it, and satisfy the floor-plan lender on every certificate.
- Open-lot and in-water inventory (floor-plan compliant)
- Sea trial & demonstration liability
- Dealers' P&D — lot to show to ramp to delivery
- Boat show and off-premises coverage
- Completed operations after the sale
We know what a floor-plan lender wants to see on the certificate — and what a named storm does to an uncovered lot in October.
Two hundred slips. Two hundred owners who think their policy is your problem.
A marina is a landlord, a stevedore, a fuel station, a boutique hotel with no rooms, and a heavy-equipment operator — simultaneously. Marina Operators Legal Liability responds when a boat in your care, custody, or control comes to harm; but the real programme goes further: the docks and piers themselves (which inland adjusters routinely misvalue), the fuel dock's pollution exposure, the travel lift and forklift operations, dry stack storage, tenant liability under your slip agreements, and a named-storm haul-out plan that matches the policy wording — because after the hurricane is a bad time to discover it doesn't.
- Marina Operators Legal Liability (MOLL)
- Docks, piers & wet infrastructure property
- Fuel dock pollution liability
- Travel lift, forklift & dry stack operations
- Named-storm haul-out planning & wording alignment
- Slip agreement & tenant liability review
- Workers' comp with USL&H where dock meets water
We read your slip agreement before we place your cover — because that's where half your claims will be decided.
Running a full-service marina or yard complex? See our dedicated Marinas & Boatyards coverage →
The most dangerous boat in the harbour is the one on your hard.
Repair work concentrates every marine risk into one yard: someone else's vessel in your custody, open flame near fuel systems, blocked hulls that a Santa Ana gust can topple, and the long tail of completed operations — the engine you serviced failing forty miles offshore, months after the invoice was paid. Ship Repairers Legal Liability is the spine of the programme, but the wording details decide the claim: does cover follow the boat on the post-repair sea trial? Does it respond when your subcontractor's weld fails? Is your tech covered under USL&H the moment they step from the dock to the deck? We place programmes where the answer to all three is yes — in writing.
- Ship Repairers Legal Liability (SRLL)
- Care, custody & control
- Hot works — welding, grinding, open flame
- Post-repair sea trial coverage
- Completed operations
- USL&H for technicians working aboard
One weld near one fuel tank is the whole business. Your programme should know that.
Our brokers work where you work.
From Emerald Plaza in downtown San Diego, our Pacific desk serves the West Coast's marine trades in person — the dealer corridors of Southern California, the yards and marinas from Shelter Island and Harbor Island to Mission Bay and Chula Vista, and the delivery routes south into Baja. San Diego is one of the largest recreational boating markets in the United States, and its trades run on tight seasons and tighter lender requirements; having your broker in the same time zone, on the same docks, matters. California License 0F65950. Walk in, call, or catch us on the water.
The gap is in the details.
A generalist programme
- Treats a marina like a parking lot
- Treats a boatyard like an auto shop
- Leaves lender covenants and sea trials to chance
A marine trades programme
- Reads slip agreements and work orders
- Accounts for MOLL, SRLL and USL&H
- Aligns certificates, storm plans and cover
The haul-out plan that paid for itself.
A Southern California marina came to us carrying a policy that required a written named-storm plan it didn't have — a compliance gap its previous agent had never flagged, sitting under two hundred occupied slips. We rebuilt the programme around a documented haul-out and lay-down plan, aligned the policy wording to it, and rehearsed the trigger sequence with the operations team. When the remnant of a Pacific hurricane tracked north the following season, the plan executed in eleven hours. Every claim that followed was paid as presented — zero denials, zero wording disputes, and a renewal that priced the marina as the well-run risk it had proven itself to be.
- Named-storm plan written and wired into the policy wording
- 200-slip haul-out executed in 11 hours
- Zero denied claims after the event
- Renewal priced on demonstrated risk quality
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MARINA · 200 SLIPS · CLIENT SINCE 2023
Marine trades, answered.
Your season doesn't pause for paperwork. Neither do we.
Complimentary marine trades review — inventory, liability, USL&H classification, lender certificates, storm wording. One conversation with the Pacific desk, and you'll know exactly where you stand.
Last reviewed: September 2026