After our last article about racing, the Yachtmaster team chartered the lovely Broads yacht “Moonshadow” for the 3 Rivers Race and enjoyed an excellent sail from Horning to Stokesby and then back through Thurne Mouth to Potter Heigham and on to Heigham Sound where we ran aground - about 6 times!

Despite heeling her over, it soon became apparent that our draft was such that we would not get through to Hickling and our race was over. In fact we had to use our engine to extract ourselves and, being conscious that the tide was soon due to ebb, we decided we had better get back to deep water while we could or we would be there for a long time. At least no damage was done.

I later contacted the Broads Authority who confirmed that they are due to dredge this area soon. Let’s hope that it’s deeper than 3ft 6 inches next year!

Other insurers are reporting that there has been quite a spate of thefts in recent months, particularly of outboard motors. The rumour is that these items are then being exported to Eastern Europe but I have no evidence to confirm this is true. I can say however, that so far we have experienced very little in the way of thefts in the East Anglian region. However, when buying second-hand gear it is always worth checking that it has come from an honest source as you will never gain better title to the goods than the vendor had, and, if they were stolen goods and later detected, those goods could be returned to their rightful owner without any compensation being paid to the unfortunate purchaser.

We have recently been considering the effectiveness of our advertising and were pleasantly surprised to note that more than 50% of our new business comes from previous customers and those recommended by existing customers. Our belief and hope is that this is a response to a high level of service not often achieved by other insurers. Certainly within the yacht insurance market we are sometimes appalled by the length of time other insurers take to respond to both claims and underwriting matters. If you widen this to include some general insurers, banks, utilities etc. one wonders whether they pay any attention at all to the level of service provided to prospective customers and indeed, how they stay in business!

To strive for excellence seems to make good sense to me. Even if you don’t always succeed you should get close most of the time!

D.Long - 17/08/2010

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