Insurance Surveys on Older Boats

An older hull is not a worse boat. Plenty of vessels from the seventies and eighties were built heavier than anything made now. What age changes is where the problems are, and underwriters know exactly where to look.

What Age Does to a Hull

Older fiberglass is usually thick and often over-built, and structurally many of these hulls are in better shape than their age suggests. The issues tend to be in what was bonded to the laminate rather than the laminate itself: stringers and floors where water has reached the core, bulkhead tabbing that has released, and deck core around every fitting anyone ever installed.

Moisture readings and percussion testing do the work here, and on an older vessel I take more of both and record where each one came from.

Wiring, Panels and Shore Power

This is where older boats most often fail an insurance survey, and it is rarely the original wiring at fault. It is forty years of additions: a new chartplotter here, a windlass there, an inverter somebody fitted in a weekend, each one spliced into whatever was nearest.

What underwriters care about is overcurrent protection, conductor sizing, terminations and whether AC and DC have been kept apart. Shore power inlets and galvanic isolation get particular attention on boats that live in a marina.

Fuel Systems and Hoses

Fuel hose has a service life and it is printed on the hose. On a vessel of a certain age it has frequently been exceeded by a decade or more, and hose that has gone hard is a finding regardless of whether it is currently leaking.

Tank condition, particularly aluminum tanks sitting in foam where they cannot drain, is the expensive one. Where a tank cannot be inspected the report says so rather than assuming it is fine.

Through-Hulls and Seacocks

Through-hulls corrode, and seacocks seize. The test is not whether they exist but whether they operate, and on an older boat a meaningful proportion will not. That is a safety finding and an underwriter will treat it as one.

Bonding conductors and anode condition are read alongside this, because the same galvanic activity that eats a fitting has usually left evidence elsewhere.

What You Can Fix Before the Survey

Genuinely worth doing first, because these are cheap and they are guaranteed findings otherwise: replace expired flares, service or replace fire extinguishers, exercise every seacock and free the ones that stick, check that the shore power inlet is sound, replace obviously aged fuel hose, and tidy any wiring you know was added later.

None of that hides anything. It removes the findings that would have been on the report for no good reason, so what is left is the real picture of the boat.