Insurance while cruising ...

[Bulawayo]

We insured through Pantenious - Monaco branch - and had a disaster with them. Two boats ago, a yard in Turkey used a travel lift to reposition our cat, without telling us, and without agreement and they managed to drop the cat onto concrete, driving one keel into the hull. Pantaneous we not helpful at all, despite our history of no claims. Not withsatnding, we have heard good things about Pantanious alternate offices. Its probably like banks - one branch has a good manager whilst another might not.
We now carry third party insurance via a New Zealand company and who was recommended by other cruisers.
Pantanious (Monaco) constantly demanded our precise whereabouts as well - rather than a general area.

[sailcrazy]

During the 3 years we spent in the Medd almost every country (for initial checkin), every marina, and several of the town Quays wanted to see our insurance papers......ins required, including Liability. Here in the VIs (USVI and BVIs) no one as asked yet! And several of the marinas we visited in Asia also wanted to see the ins papers. We enjoyed great service, very reasonable premiums, and quick response from Top Sail, and I would easily recommend them. Their rates went up substantially when we moved to the Caribb, and we switched companies.......now we wished we'd stayed with Top Sail! FWIW

[Steve1944]

Anyone have any experience with Jackline? (Insurance Company)

[chuckr]

We have IMIS and Jacking and while we have had no claims they work with us on our cost to keep it at a minimum for the area we want to cruises in and make changes as necessary. Last year we needed additional liability for Montenegro and they got it for us in less than 24 hours.
They also insured us for a 2 person crossing of the Atlantic.

[barboak]

Have used IMIS for 11 years, very happy and one claim the first year went very well!


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[mikereed100]

We do not as yet carry insurance. This means that we sail in a constant, low-level state of paranoia that makes us extremely careful, conservative and alert. It may be my imagination, but it seems that our insured friends tend to carry more sail, anchor on less scope and laugh at the size of our anchors. Since we save thousands every year on premiums I have no qualms about buying the best ground tackle, renewing standing and running rigging before it shows signs of wear, stocking the boat with safety gear etc. In addition, if anything were to happen underway we would fight tooth and nail to keep the boat afloat and moving as it represents everything we own. (I can't help but think that if Rainmaker had not been insured it would be sitting in a boatyard undergoing repairs today instead of floating unattended in the Atlantic.)

[Steve1944]

Anyone who sails their boat off shore without insurance puts themselves at risk and others.


Sailing without insurance is just


Plain


Stupid.

[monte]

Good points Mike.
Steve I don't get your point. How is not having insurance putting yourself and others at risk?

[Bulawayo]

Originally Posted by steve1944

Anyone who sails their boat off shore without insurance puts themselves at risk and others.


Sailing without insurance is just


Plain


Stupid.

Well, that is one opinion - however, derogatory/misinformed it is. We are globally insured but we know plenty of others that are not. I wonder what gives someone the perogative to make such statements? What gives an individual the right to dictate to others? Off-shore, who are they putting in danger? They are very little risk to anyone. Perhaps the posting really should read coastal / inshore or in marina's - where it is usually mandated anyway.
It was not that long ago that sailboat insurance was unheard of.

[mikereed100]

Originally Posted by steve1944

Anyone who sails their boat off shore without insurance puts themselves at risk and others.

I don't see the logic here. People who sail offshore without insurance put themselves in financial risk to be sure. But there is no risk to the boat, it's crew or anyone else on the water. Maybe you meant liability insurance? I should have mentioned that we carry liability insurance through Progressive for $100/yr so that we can stay in marinas that require it.

[Steve1944]

Originally Posted by monte

Good points Mike.
Steve I don't get your point. How is not having insurance putting yourself and others at risk?

Yeah, liability. Yea it's liability that's it.

It takes at least one other to bring about a liable claim. And that would be if the other person was put in danger.

With no insurance there would be no recourse and that would put you and others at risk, possibly in danger.

Not to accept that responsibility would be because you're wrapped up in your own stuper, driven by your own id.

[Bulawayo]

Why do people have to be so negative about others? We have suffered damage to our our own boat when another uninsured steel boat dragged down on us. It made us appreciate the value of insurance and of checking with boats in the vicinity whether they carry appropriate insurance or not. If we find ourselves amongst uninsured vessels then we simply have a choice....to go or stay. It is sometimes annoying. However, nowadays, we rarely find this the case as the majority have third party insurance in place. We do meet boats that have no issurance and this is their choice.

[Evenstar]

Originally Posted by bsurvey

with all the experience relative to this topic, is there any ports in world that require you to show proof of insurance?

Countries? No.

But many marinas will, definitely in NZ and Australia. Liability only, but you need it.

[Evenstar]

Originally Posted by sneuman

I realize it's been covered before, but I'd really like to see a fresh discussion of

a) Whether to have insurance while cruising
b) If so, whether it should be full coverage or liability only (on an older fiberglass boat whose loss would be a setback but not a devastating one, financially speaking).
c) What is the relative cost of full vs. liability (in approximate terms)
d) Best insurers for this purpose

Lastly, anyone with a personal story of making a claim from a far-flung locale. Did you get your money? If so, how long did it take and what hoops did you have to jump through?

a) Depends on a few things. Totally a personal choice.

1) Mortgage status of your boat; if there is one you will be required to get a hull policy without a doubt.

2) Your tolerance for risk/financial situation. Can you take the financial hit if you completely lose your boat? How about if your boat is massively damaged - will you be able to fix it? Will it end your cruising for good in either case?

3) Your sense of responsibility. Are you willing/able to clean up your messes out of your pocket if you make them? If your boat drags onto a half million dollar vessel, hooks his anchor and he ends up on the beach are you going to make good on his loss? He's probably insured with a boat worth 500K but he will still be out of pocket $10-15K in deductibles. What if it's an old boat only worth $20K and uninsured - are you going to make good out of your pocket, or are you OK saying "tough break pal" and walk away from something you caused? This is a personal values judgement; you may get sued trying to walk on damage you caused and can you afford that is another question.

Also if you intend to stay in marinas Liability may be required in some countries.

Note that international laws WRT to torts and liability may be quite different than the sue happy U.S.

b) Full vs. liability depends on the questions above as well, parts 1 & 2 need to be answered.

c) Relative cost...a hull policy is MUCH more than a liability policy.

d) I've used Pantaenius, Jackline, and a couple of others. We're dropping Pantaenius this year as they are increasing their premiums by more than 20% and our agent found us coverage with another company for about 75% of Pantaenius premiums. I've been told this is because of losses they suffered, not anything we did.

I had some...communication issues...with the Jackline program. I thought I'd communicated my itinerary precisely and got a great quote. Once the insurance was bound I found out it didn't include any Pacific coverage and I required an extra rider for the itinerary I'd told them about which added about $2,100 to the cost; this left me displeased since I'd dumped Pantaenius and the agent that had been insuring well me for a decade but couldn't match the price. Ultimately we ended up canceling the policy before triggering the rider because paying the extra premium for our Pacific routes didn't make sense and went back to Pantaenius for our Pacific coverage West of Panama.

To cancel that policy I dealt with Markel, the underwriter, directly. IMHO and that of my regular agent they jerked me around about cancelling the policy ("we need an original signedletter from you, no faxes or e-mails...etc." - as if they don't know what a pain in the rear this is from abroad). There are some marginal cancellation policies there that added extra fees to the process and reduced my refunded unused premium more than I expected.

Our first year out cruising our agent worked the policy in an interesting fashion. He kept us insured with a U.S. coastal policy based on our home port since we were cruising the U.S. until November, then added a special rider on for our trip to the Caribbean which of course was bracketed by hurricane dates. This resulted in some not insubstantial savings over an global policy and was completely legitimate coverage - this is certainly an option for a short time cruiser who isn't going past the Carib. In our case we couldn't renew this plan since we weren't headed back to he U.S., but for the first year out it saved us a couple of thousand bucks writing it that way.


I've not had any claims yet, knock on wood.

[Bulawayo]

Originally Posted by Evenstar

a) Depends on a few things. Totally a personal choice.

1) Mortgage status of your boat; if there is one you will be required to get a hull policy without a doubt.

2) Your tolerance for risk/financial situation. Can you take the financial hit if you completely lose your boat? How about if your boat is massively damaged - will you be able to fix it? Will it end your cruising for good in either case?

3) Your sense of responsibility. Are you willing/able to clean up your messes out of your pocket if you make them? If your boat drags onto a half million dollar vessel, hooks his anchor and he ends up on the beach are you going to make good on his loss? He's probably insured with a boat worth 500K but he will still be out of pocket $10-15K in deductibles. What if it's an old boat only worth $20K and uninsured - are you going to make good out of your pocket, or are you OK saying "tough break pal" and walk away from something you caused? This is a personal values judgement; you may get sued trying to walk on damage you caused and can you afford that is another question.

Also if you intend to stay in marinas Liability may be required in some countries.

Note that international laws WRT to torts and liability may be quite different than the sue happy U.S.

b) Full vs. liability depends on the questions above as well, parts 1 & 2 need to be answered.

c) Relative cost...a hull policy is MUCH more than a liability policy.

d) I've used Pantaenius, Jackline, and a couple of others. We're dropping Pantaenius this year as they are increasing their premiums by more than 20% and our agent found us coverage with another company for about 75% of Pantaenius premiums. I've been told this is because of losses they suffered, not anything we did.

I had some...communication issues...with the Jackline program. I thought I'd communicated my itinerary precisely and got a great quote. Once the insurance was bound I found out it didn't include any Pacific coverage and I required an extra rider for the itinerary I'd told them about which added about $2,100 to the cost; this left me displeased since I'd dumped Pantaenius and the agent that had been insuring well me for a decade but couldn't match the price. Ultimately we ended up canceling the policy before triggering the rider because paying the extra premium for our Pacific routes didn't make sense and went back to Pantaenius for our Pacific coverage West of Panama.

To cancel that policy I dealt with Markel, the underwriter, directly. IMHO and that of my regular agent they jerked me around about cancelling the policy ("we need an original signedletter from you, no faxes or e-mails...etc." - as if they don't know what a pain in the rear this is from abroad). There are some marginal cancellation policies there that added extra fees to the process and reduced my refunded unused premium more than I expected.

Our first year out cruising our agent worked the policy in an interesting fashion. He kept us insured with a U.S. coastal policy based on our home port since we were cruising the U.S. until November, then added a special rider on for our trip to the Caribbean which of course was bracketed by hurricane dates. This resulted in some not insubstantial savings over an global policy and was completely legitimate coverage - this is certainly an option for a short time cruiser who isn't going past the Carib. In our case we couldn't renew this plan since we weren't headed back to he U.S., but for the first year out it saved us a couple of thousand bucks writing it that way.


I've not had any claims yet, knock on wood.

Hi Evenstar,
We have only had one claim since full time cruising from 1995.
Our cat was dropped whilst being moved by a travel lift whilst we were away. This happened at Finike, Turkey. To add to the chaos they caused, they were replacing the teak deck on an adjacent boat and they disconnected the rigging - the mast fell over and the spreaders punched through our saloon windows. This boat we could not claim against as it had left the marina before we returned and the yard had 'lost' their details! This happened just after we had left the boat for three months at the beginning of a very wet winter. The rain poured into our boat. The saving grace was that the drop had split the hull open at the keel / hull interface and this allowed a lot of the water to drain out! We were comprehensively insured through Pantaenius, Monaco. They sent a surveyor who assessed the damage and then we had to sail the boat to Marmaris for repairs. We patched the holed hull and saloon window and delivered our boat to the appointed repairer. We were very unhappy with the final repairs (botched in our opinion) and initially had to pay for all the repairs ourselves and then claim back from Pantaenius. Despite written agreement / invoices etc Pantaenius made substantial deductions as they subsequently re-appraised the costs. We objected to the yard selected for the repairs as they obviously did not understand what was required. We saw zero compensation for additional costs like the travel lift and time spent ashore for the repairs. Nor were Pantaenius interested in helping with costs for a surveyor to oversee the repairs nor our costs incurred during this period - flying back and forth etc. We also ended up paying for the replacement window and its transport as they claimed this was required to mitigate further damage. The list of issues and complaints were also forwarded to Pantaenius head office. This did not help as they said it was totally in the hands of the Monaco office. We ended up with a third rate 'repair' which left us with a distorted aft and forward main bulkheads on the starboard side. The repairs to the hull/deck were also very insubstantial - I would have hesitated to stand the boat on its keels again like we used to. We ended up paying over 30% of the actual repairs ourselves in addition to the deductible. One lesson we learnt from this is that we shall not accept paying ourselves and then claiming back if we are placed in a similar future situation. You have zero leverage and the insurers are happy to delay refunding you for as long as you continue to disagree with them. After months of correspondence and numerous telephone calls we had to settle. Nowadays, with better finances behind us and better global resources available to us, we would challenge a company like Pantaenius at a higher level.
We refuse to re-insure with Pantaenius again after that experience and which we had no responsibilties in. We accept that others may have had good experience with Pantaenius but our experience was anything but satisfactory. We sold the boat without ever relaunching - at a very substantial loss.

Our other issue with Pantaenius was the constant need to define our precise cruising area. There were many limitations imposed and frequent bouts of zero liability to Pantaenius imposed. We accept that sailing parts of the N.W. Indian Ocean has insurance risks but Pantaenius took the limitations to extremes.
To answer your Q's about what we would do if we caused loss to another boat or some form of other damage.......we are fortunate to have insurance to address this. If we did not have insurance then it would come down to whether we had the means to redress what we had done/caused. Our own (the one damaged in Turkey) boat was dragged down upon in East Africa by a 30 ton steel boat that took out our stb pull pit before hooking into our stb push pit - and having destroyed all our stanchions in between. He was uninsured as he could not afford insurance. What could we realistically do? We could have involved the authorities and had the boat impounded - and caused a young family significant anguish. Perhaps this would cause them to appraise their lifestyles and to ensure they carried insurance in future. To be fair they could have immediately left the anchorage (it was a river) but they stayed to help us sort out the mess and over the following days helped jury rig the life lines as our eldest children were only two years old at the time. We meet many boats that are not insured in any fashion and am unaware of them causing loss to others. These boats always seem to have very substantial anchoring arrangement - except the boat that dragged onto us! People may chuckle, but that particular boat ended up with our spare 75lb CQR anchor - yes, they gained from their brush with us as we donated it to them along with 30 meters of chain! We have generally found other yotties, and I mean true yotties, to be decent people and in our case they were truly remorseful about the damage to our cat. Obviously, we ended up out of pocket as we had to replace all the starboard side life lines arrangements. We have experienced other yotties generosity and am happy to reciprocate - we have donated spare hand held GPs's to other boats, and even a small outboard engine. We are believers in what goes around, come around. We try and treat others as we wish to be treated. In turn we have had benefactors at critical times.

We usually try to avoid marina's but sometimes it is necessary to enter - usually to clear in thru' immigration & customs. Sometimes we are asked for our insurance, but most often we are not. In Chagos we are always asked to produce proof of insurance, and the marina's in South Africa also ask for policy details - there are very few anchorages there! No where else in the Indian Ocean or Red Sea has ever asked us for insurance proof. In the Med we were frequently asked for a copy of our policy.

We are now about to switch to a New Zealand based broker that has been recommended to us by several other cruisers.......