Jetski Security

This is intended to give advice and information on how to keep your craft safe. For a summary of the RJP Marine Insurance Services policy cover in respect of theft, click here or for the full wording of this condition in the Policy Wording, click here.

A personal watercraft is an attractive possession. It’s very attractive to thieves as well but its attraction to a thief lies not in its graceful lines, its surging power or its latest colours, but in the ease with which many craft can be stolen!

How can you work to prevent this?

Firstly, never let it out of your sight – okay, so not practical but when you are away from home on a day out, plan ahead so that most of the time at least you don’t leave it unattended. Take a picnic, have a barbecue next to your craft but if you do “eat out” think about where you leave your craft and trailer. Clamp the trailer, lock the craft to it, park in view of where you are sitting, park in a well lit area, use your car or cars to block the trailer and craft in, chain it to something that the thief can’t drag away with it, go out and check up on it every 15 minutes and make a big thing of this, show the potential thief that you are being pro-active with security etc etc.

When you are leaving your craft overnight put it in a locked building, your policy will require you to do this when it’s at your home or the craft’s normal storage place. If it’s out of sight in a locked building then opportunist thieves won’t even know it’s there. We know from our long experience that a craft that is regularly left on view is just asking to be stolen.

Maybe consider it this way

Let’s say the value of your pride and joy is £6000. So six thousand nice British Pounds. Would you put that in used £10 notes in a suitcase, strapped to a trailer in your garage/building/shed/garden , leave it overnight for days, weeks or months, relying on a “christmas cracker” padlock or the “high security” tin up and over garage door and expect to see it again? Especially if you had spent half an hour every week end on your drive in public view counting the money!

“No” is the correct answer!

Nor would you leave it on the roadside , in the field at the end of the road at the motorway service station or the resident’s carpark around the corner?

A personal watercraft is currency to thieves. If they see that you have one when you’re maintaining it on your driveway or coming back from the lake, they will take advantage of any weak security or carelessness.

Removing the seat – why?

At RJP Marine Insurance Services we introduced the idea of removing the seat or hood of your craft , it’s possible to do that with the vast majority of models , when it’s at it’s home or permanent storage location and storing it in a separate locked building. A thief will not generally want a craft without a seat as it’s inconvenient and either selling on the craft without a seat or trying to buy a seat could and has left a thief vulnerable to being caught. When it comes down to it the thief will go for the easiest option. It perhaps also saves you the rigmarole of having to immobilise your craft whilst it’s in your locked garage as many other policies require. We’d never discourage more security but it can backfire , did you hear about the jetski that was written off when we had some bad flooding? It had been anchored to the garage floor and “drowned” when the flood water rose!

It’s Insured so why worry?

Well you could say that but no one really wants to lose their craft and it’s inconvenient and annoying to be without it as , however good an insurer is , it will take time to get back on the water with a replacement ski. You could easily miss the whole summer , ‘cos summer sometimes only lasts a few weeks! Thefts have to be investigated by the police , crime reference numbers obtained , investigated by the insurer’s loss adjuster , value proved , documents dug out and that’s before you then have to find a similar craft to yours for the market value that the insurer ( and jetski industry ) put on it. You’ll have a policy excess to contribute and then have to buy some more insurance cover. An insurance policy is an absolute necessity but it can’t remove the theft experience altogether. It will still leave a bitter taste , all theft does and it’s best not to lose your craft in the first place.