Anyone got a boat?

[littlemisscomper]

I want to ask about overwintering. My parents live on the south coast of Cornwall. They have a large outbuilding that's pretty much empty besides some old bits of furniture and stuff that I hope will be going in their next skip! It's their long term aim to hire the building out as storage for boat owners for the winter months. I know nothing about it so I have some questions:

1. Small birds like sparrows can get in under the roof, flitter about a bit and leave again. Is this a 'gasp-shock-horror-absolute-no-no' or is this not unusual in boat storage sheds? Obviously they do what birds do (ie, droppings!) but just a few here and there, the floor isn't covered with them or anything!

1. Would my parents need insurance, or would any fire or theft or anything just be covered by the owners'?

1. What would you as an owner need from your boat storage facility? Would you expect to be able to clean and maintain the boat there? Would you want to be able to take it out sometimes throughout the colder months or is it literally just somewhere you rock up to in the autumn, drop the boat and come and collect it in the spring?

1. The building is just a basic breeze-block outbuilding with a corrugated metal roof. It gets cold in the winter and there's a damp feel in the air in there on wet days although no physical water comes in. Would this be a problem?

1. What would you expect to pay to store your boat? Do you pay per month or what? I guess the rent largely depends on the size of the boat.

I know nothing about it, can you tell? Anyway any advice gratefully received!

Is there a big need for such things in their area? My dp have a boat but it would be unnecessary to put in storage for the winter, plus too expensive and elaborate to get from a to b. Theirs just gets taken out of the water at the end of the season and they work on it over the winter.

Your parents will need to go for change of use on the building because it is being run as a commercial unit and is no longer just ancillary to the residential property. Planning permission costs and depending on where they are a change of use may not be granted. Once they have PP then they would need to look into things like PLI and insurance in general. boats aren't cheap and no boat owner is going to leave it with them unless they know that in the event of an accident that they are covered. They would also need to tell their own domestic insurer what they were doing and make sure that things like site access to trailers, a turning area etc were sorted out. I would say in the first instance they need to check if this really is something viable. on the whole they aren't going to make much more than pin money from it and I would question if its a viable thing to do or not. message me if you want more info.