Tender Monitoring: Reduce your risk of damage and loss of tender, Improve insurance terms, Complete monitoring when moored, in use and under tow
The risks of superyacht tender towing and damage when either moored or left unattended are an industry problem: insurers are losing too much money, captains and owners are unhappy with the operational limitations caused by insurance restrictions, and when a tender is lost or damaged there’s disappointment for owners and guests. No-one’s happy – existing towing protection simply isn’t working.
Cross-industry collaboration on ‘advanced tow protection’ created TowPro. TowPro“eyes in the boat” keep captains aware of issues day and night – preventing losses, reducing insurance claims, and already allowing leading insurers to reduce towing restrictions. https://www.pantaenius.com/uk-en/superyacht/superyacht-news/full-article/news/advanced-towing-system/
Tender towing best practice today
Insurers require captains to make regular observations of the towed tender from the yacht, but the challenge is that remote observations can only provide incomplete safety information about the tender, for example: whether the tender is there, and the stability of its surfing and yawing motion.
What a remote observer cannot do is:
- monitor key safety information inside the boat: how long bilge pumps are running for, level of charge in the battery, bilge water levels.
- maintain continuous observations to ensure early awareness.
- maintain clear observations of the tender by night.
The consequence is that by the time a watchkeeper can see a problem with the tender, it may be too late to take action to prevent an incident or loss.
“A pair of eyes in the boat” – what the captains say
Hear from captains why they are concerned about the risks of towing, the operational problems with current towing insurance restrictions, and what they want from an Advanced Tow Protection product.
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Benefits of TowPro to insurers and captains
- Captains benefit immediately from the reduced risk of tender loss, avoiding financial impact for the owner, disappointment for guests, and disruption for the captain.
- Insurers benefit from reduced level of tender towing risk, allowing them to respond to pressure to reduce restrictions.
- Reduced restrictions allow captains operational flexibility, which is a direct benefit to them too.
Leading insurers have already started to offer improved towing conditions for yachts with TowPro installed:
- Reducing deductibles for all tender towing.
- Removing exclusions on towing by night, and/or reducing the higher night-time deductibles.
These are receiving an enthusiastic response from captains.
How TowPro increases awareness and reduces risk of loss
TowPro was developed through a 12 month collaboration between insurers, captains, marine risk experts, and electronics installers.
TowPro uses the latest data monitoring technology to provide the crew on watch with comprehensive safety information live from the tender: both from outside and inside the boat.
This means that crew awareness of towing issues is faster and more complete by day – and that this increased awareness is maintained by night as well.
Increased crew awareness from TowPro helps captains reduce the risk of tender towing, and eliminate avoidable losses.
TowPro provides two sets of information to the crew
“Eyes in the boat”: continuous “safety indicator” information about what is happening inside the tender on and off tow: how long the bilge pumps have run in the past hour, the charge in the battery, the level of water in the bilges. Plus continuous measurement of surfing and yawing, trim and pitching, list angle and rolling.
“Bridge Alerts”: immediate audible and visual alerts if any of these safety indicators exceed pre-set thresholds, giving the crew immediate early warning of potential problems which they need to investigate, and which they can continue to monitor as they take precautionary actions.
