THE WHITE HAT MARINE SURVEYING BLOG
The musings of a Marine Surveyor in Devon after 15 years of surveying boats in the UK and Europe.
Fossil Fuels On Boats – A Recipe For Disaster?
This article about fossil fuels on boats was first published in the June 2025 edition of Boat Chat newsletter. Read the full newsletter and all back issues for free at Boatchat.uk Background Recent events have made me pause and think about fossil fuels on boats and...
Prepare Your Boat For Winter
Winter is coming - it is time to prepare your boat. A Winter Closing Up list needs to be tailored to your boat, your location and your intentions. To help prompt the right sorts of questions on what needs doing on your boat, Boat Chat has pulled together a suggested...
What is a White Hat Marine Survey?
A White Hat Marine Survey is inspired by the book ‘Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management’, by Edward de Bono published in 1985, which sought to optimise the thinking process within groups of people working in a collaborative endeavour. The...
The Evolution Of Boat Hull Numbers
The evolution of boat hull numbers over the last few decades from simple to complex is A Good Thing. One of the fun parts of any marine survey (for this surveyor anyway) is finding them. Of course, on some boats they are harder to find and the older the boat the...
Are Electric Vehicle Fires More Dangerous?
The International Union of Marine Insurance recently published ‘Best practice & recommendations for the safe carriage of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in which they assess the data regarding carriage of EVs and the challenges posed by electric vehicle fires to...
Boat Fire Safety Lessons Following ‘Fremantle Highway’ Fire
There are several boat fire safety lessons to be learned from the cargo fire on the bulk vehicle carrier ‘Fremantle Highway’ in July 2023. The fire caused the loss of several hundred vehicles, the death of an Indian crew member and forced the crew to abandon the...
LPG Safety On Boats – Free Checklist
A safe LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) installation on a boat is most often a simple installation with several built in safety features. The best way to assess any system is to follow the LPG pathway from cylinder to appliance. The PDF file below contains some simple...
Inspecting the Aging Sailboat by Don Casey – Book Review
https://youtu.be/G0JG51uJ9hE Inspecting the Aging Sailboat by Don Casey has been one of my go to surveying books since I first bought it in 2007. It gives a brilliant insight into how to assess the condition of an aging fibreglass yacht and is a really great...
The Marine Surveyor’s Toolbox – A Guided Tour
https://youtu.be/itKXjGrnm0U What tools do you actually need to inspect a boat? Well, that depends on how deeply you want to understand the boat’s construction, its condition and what your relationship is with the boat. Inspecting any boat can be done with...
Rust Tubercles
One of the great joys (please take this in the most subjective manner you can) in surveying boats is the wide range of corrosion mechanisms and their effects on the variety of metals on offer to the attentive marine surveyor. Finding, identifying and reporting on...