Cruisers Forum Insurance ?

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Kona

Infamous? surprising!

i know by experience that many boat owners claims for untrue reasons sometime hoping to get a new Apple laptop or so.
I do not have all details of my claim here now as I am far from home.
Situation was that a guy with a trimaran hit us very hard and the hull got cracked about 8 feet long, so we had to work on that and yes it was a long tiume deal but we had the money back.
Why do you say that this company is unfamous?

And I know by experience this company refusing to pay a legitament claim in a total loss. I also know a marina in Australia that requires insurance (like most marinas in Aus.) that explicitly refuses to accept boats with their coverage. Just do a Google search to find their reputation.

[BillKny]

Originally Posted by Kona

I am personnally covered world wide

Except... if you go to Mexico you are required by Mexican law to carry liability insurance underwritten by a Mexican company. Your current policy does not need local requirements.

[Flying Monkey]

Boat insurance... love to hate it.
I am "shopping" for insurance right now. The vessel is a 1978, CSY 44 foot, pilothouse ketch. She is a strong, solid boat, very well equipped. She was surveyed and fully insured in 2020. Now I am renewing the policy as well as shopping for a bit of a better price. Here are my two cents...
The ballpark cost of insurance on this vessel for cruising area including Coastal US, plus the Bahamas out to the Turks, is just under $2,000. My initial reaction to this price was something like, "DAMMIT" that is a lot of money. Of course, it IS a lot of money.
How do I justify paying it?
I sail this boat. In other words, I am using it, out on the water. I have also done a lot of work on the vessel in the year that I have owned her. I ask myself, would I want to carry the risk for whatever happens to this boat? That answer is a solid, No. Maybe more like a solid, No F****** Way! But why?
I can't forsee any situation in which an accident or damage would occur that would cost less than $2,000 to repair. Of course, insurance is going to do whatever they can to minimize the amount they would pay out on a claim. Actually, I would hope to never have a claim, ever. But just having the ability to transfer that risk from my checking account to the insurance company's checking account is worth $2,000/year.
For example, when I sailed across the Atlantic in 2019, I had a satellite phone with me. It cost $700/week. It was for emergencies, of course, but I never used it for that. Instead, I called my girlfriend. I called my Dad, and that kind of thing. I guess that I did get some useful weather information that helped our trip, but I could have used text over Garmin In Reach, which I also had, for that purpose. After the trip, I mailed the phone back, essentially unused. Was it worth it? Yes. I am glad that I had it. Next time, I would buy a satellite phone, but the cost is about the same.
This is how I look at boat insurance. I want it. I hope to never use it. I feel good about having an organization that will carry that risk for me. If I carried that risk myself, then I would need to keep a significantly larger chunk of money sitting around.
Even though it is a pile of money, I believe the value is there and it makes sense to insure a vessel. If I was keeping it at a dock all the time, then I might reconsider, but the cost would also be significantly less.
I am also the kind of guy who buys rental car insurance, even though it is $35/day. I want the ability to walk away in case anything happens, and $35/day seems like a cheap way to buy that ability. It is the same argument. There is nothing that can happen on the road that will cost less than $35 to fix or replace.

Having said that..
If anyone has a connection for good boat insurance... you know.. holler 😀

[Braiden]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

Few weeks ago I attended New England Boat Show with the sole purpose of getting liability only insurance quote on a 40 year old sailboat. Of the dozen or so insurance reps there I spoke with only one who was even remotely interested in talking to me. Another flippantly told me "$1,200-1,400 annual premium", on liability only policy, mind you! The other 10 upon hearing my description of what I needed politely sent me away.

The one who actually spent 2-3 minutes talking to me gave a ball park figure of $700-800 and a recent survey requirement. Not gonna happen at that rate. And probably that $700-800 boat show estimate will end up significantly higher when the real bill comes in.

My point being that IMO there is a pent up need for reasonably priced (say up to $500) "liability only" policies for 30-50 year old boats whose hull values do not make any insurance other then liability only economicaly viable or sensible. I have self insured for the past 15 years and the savings have been more than all the values of all the boats I owned in that time put together. So today I am already way ahead of the game. Except those pesky lobbyists for the insurance industry are trying to skew the free market solution in their favor by all kinds of compulsory coverage schemes.

And no I don't believe I should be paying for the privilege of insuring that $1-2mil yacht which may come in contact with my boat. If you have the means to own such a yacht you surely can afford to insure it yourself and agianst possibility of a contact with a boat like mine.

End of my rant against the insurance mafia.

haha totally agree insurance companies can be very difficult to deal with sometimes

[Boatguy30]

And in OZ, I have heard it is getting sticky many spots being asked for insurance.

No issues in NZ, but I have my self built cat GOP insured here with no survey for $70k NZ for about $550NZ a year but it is only 6 years old. Would be much more in states and liability (10 or 20 million!) would be much lower as the insurance people want to sell you an umbrella policy also in states.

In my experience, trials lawyers and insurance salesman are the best of friends at the yacht club.

[captlloyd]

As the original OP my issue from the beginning was acquiring liability insurance so that I could meet most marina requirements for dockage. My suggestion was to form a co-op of boat owners and provide our own liability insurance. Not an outpouring of positive response. But the problem persists and and in my opinion will get worse. But thinking outside the box, maybe the problem is not the insurance but the marina. What about the prospect of buying a distressed marina/marinas that have a much reduced liability policy ? Yes your boat would have little to no coverage in a marina fire, but that might be a risk I would be willing to take. It could be set up as an ownership/timeshare kind of thing, incorporated of course. If successful maybe various locations throughout the US. Just throwing ideas out there, seeing what sticks to the wall.

[BillKny]

Originally Posted by captlloyd

As the original OP my issue from the beginning was acquiring liability insurance so that I could meet most marina requirements for dockage. My suggestion was to form a co-op of boat owners and provide our own liability insurance. Not an outpouring of positive response. But the problem persists and and in my opinion will get worse. But thinking outside the box, maybe the problem is not the insurance but the marina. What about the prospect of buying a distressed marina/marinas that have a much reduced liability policy ? Yes your boat would have little to no coverage in a marina fire, but that might be a risk I would be willing to take. It could be set up as an ownership/timeshare kind of thing, incorporated of course. If successful maybe various locations throughout the US. Just throwing ideas out there, seeing what sticks to the wall.

CaptLoyd,

You completely miss the reasons for marinas requiring insurance.

The reason a marina requires you to have liability insurance is if YOUR BOAT starts the fire in the marina, they (and the other boat owners who's boats were damaged) can collect from YOUR insurance company. They don't give a damn about the damage to YOUR boat!

Or if your boat sinks at the dock, who pays to clean it up???

Or you crash your boat into somebody else's while docking, everybody knows you have the financial resources to make the damages whole.

I would not want even part time ownership in a marina where I had to carry the full liability for every accident caused by every boat there. That's a fool's game. Hell, I wouldn't stay at a marina where none of the other boats had liability insurance!

[captlloyd]

Originally Posted by BillKny

CaptLoyd,

You completely miss the reasons for marinas requiring insurance.

The reason a marina requires you to have liability insurance is if YOUR BOAT starts the fire in the marina, they (and the other boat owners who's boats were damaged) can collect from YOUR insurance company. They don't give a damn about the damage to YOUR boat!

Or if your boat sinks at the dock, who pays to clean it up???

Or you crash your boat into somebody else's while docking, everybody knows you have the financial resources to make the damages whole.

I would not want even part time ownership in a marina where I had to carry the full liability for every accident caused by every boat there. That's a fool's game. Hell, I wouldn't stay at a marina where none of the other boats had liability insurance!

And you completely miss the point of my last post. If your boat catches on fire, I lose my boat to. Look, this type of marina would not be for people like you, it would be for people who want to self insure, and there are lots out there right now, some of them occasionally tied up next to you. Reality. The marina could have extra safeguards for fire dangers, I won’t go into that now. Just throwing the idea around.

[4arch]

Around here there are still some small mom and pop marinas that don’t require insurance. I assume they are able to do this by not carrying any property or liability insurance on the marina itself and by owning their properties outright and not having any bank loans on the marina property or assets (because presumably insurers and banks are the entities forcing the individual boatowner insurance requirements at marinas where they exist). They are self-insuring against minor disasters and rolling the dice on the chances of a disaster big enough to wipe them out being low. They mitigate risk by being on-property daily (or by living there) so that they can keep a close eye on things that might become hazards. They can also personally interview and approve all possible slipholders/boats and therefore assess risk on a case by case basis. And certainly, they don’t advertise the fact that they don’t ask for or require insurance.

I think at a chain or co-op of non-insured marinas you’d lose that personal risk mitigation that comes from an owner/operator having poured their whole life into a place. The chain, by definition, would also amass a lot more assets than a mom and pop and would therefore become a bigger target for litigation. Any advertisement of the fact that the place didn’t require insurance I imagine would be a further potential liability exposure. Also, no bank in their right mind would loan money for property acquisition or capital improvements to a company whose business model was catering to uninsured boaters.

If we look at self-financing, I found a 60-slip marina in MD for $1,600,000. That’s one of the more inexpensive marina listings on the east coast. To buy that marina as a co-op, sans any outside investor, each slipholder would have to put up $26,666. Putting up $26K to avoid a $1-2K annual insurance bill just isn’t a deal many people are going to take.

I don’t disagree with the basic premise that boat insurance has become too expensive with too few options for coverage and that it’s a problem that’s particularly painful to owners of older and smaller boats. It just seems that getting into the marina ownership game as a way to avoid having to insure is trading one set of headaches for another.

[captlloyd]

Originally Posted by 4arch

Around here there are still some small mom and pop marinas that don’t require insurance. I assume they are able to do this by not carrying any property or liability insurance on the marina itself and by owning their properties outright and not having any bank loans on the marina property or assets (because presumably insurers and banks are the entities forcing the individual boatowner insurance requirements at marinas where they exist). They are self-insuring against minor disasters and rolling the dice on the chances of a disaster big enough to wipe them out being low. They mitigate risk by being on-property daily (or by living there) so that they can keep a close eye on things that might become hazards. They can also personally interview and approve all possible slipholders/boats and therefore assess risk on a case by case basis. And certainly, they don’t advertise the fact that they don’t ask for or require insurance.

I think at a chain or co-op of non-insured marinas you’d lose that personal risk mitigation that comes from an owner/operator having poured their whole life into a place. The chain, by definition, would also amass a lot more assets than a mom and pop and would therefore become a bigger target for litigation. Any advertisement of the fact that the place didn’t require insurance I imagine would be a further potential liability exposure. Also, no bank in their right mind would loan money for property acquisition or capital improvements to a company whose business model was catering to uninsured boaters.

If we look at self-financing, I found a 60-slip marina in MD for $1,600,000. That’s one of the more inexpensive marina listings on the east coast. To buy that marina as a co-op, sans any outside investor, each slipholder would have to put up $26,666. Putting up $26K to avoid a $1-2K annual insurance bill just isn’t a deal many people are going to take.

I don’t disagree with the basic premise that boat insurance has become too expensive with too few options for coverage and that it’s a problem that’s particularly painful to owners of older and smaller boats. It just seems that getting into the marina ownership game as a way to avoid having to insure is trading one set of headaches for another.

All valid points, always good to hear both pros and cons. Thanks.

[BillKny]

Originally Posted by captlloyd

And you completely miss the point of my last post. If your boat catches on fire, I lose my boat to. Look, this type of marina would not be for people like you, it would be for people who want to self insure, and there are lots out there right now, some of them occasionally tied up next to you. Reality. The marina could have extra safeguards for fire dangers, I won’t go into that now. Just throwing the idea around.

You are seem very confused about the difference between hull insurance and liability insurance.

You can certainly "self-insure" your boat's hull, and I have no problem with you doing so. The term is actually meaningless, because all it means you just accept whatever damages occur and fix them out of your pocket, and the most you have at risk is the value of the boat. That is totally your choice and I don't care.

The problem a lot of marinas have is that many people who decide their boat has more damage than is worth fixing abandon the boat, and leave the mess for other people to clean up. That is reality.

Lots of boats have so little real market value it makes no sense to insure them. I personally care not one wit what happens to your boat, and what that costs you. It is the damage you cause MY property that I want you insured for.

You can not "self-insure" against liability, short of posting a bond as surety against damages you might cause.

If your boat causes $1million dollars in damage to a marina, or to other boats, you are responsible for the full $1million dollars. There is not an upper limit--other than everything you own. All of your assets are at risk. If you have $1 million in assets they are all taken. Your house, your retirement funds, your pension, are all at risk. if you don't have $1 million you are now in bankruptcy, and the people who's property you destroyed lose whatever part of the damages you can not make right--through no fault of their own.

If someone causes damage to my boat, or my marina, I would much rather deal with their insurance company (as painful as that can certainly be!) than have to sue them to get the damages recovered.

To me it seems irresponsible to not be able to cover damages you might cause to other people.

[captlloyd]

Billkny, please reread my reply to you, especially the “ look, this type of marina might not be for people like you”.

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by captlloyd

Billkny, please reread my reply to you, especially the “ look, this type of marina might not be for people like you”.

Another problem with the Marina ownership as solution is that if when/if any of its inhabitants actually go cruising they would still have the same problem everywhere else they might visit. But, other than the much higher cost, it’s a concept that might work for a Marina full of houseboats that never leave their slip. Not so much for the rest of us.

[AJ_n_Audrey]

Originally Posted by Paul L

There's lots of reasons to have insurance. If you want to cruise long distance there are places adding insurance as a requirement for entry. I cleared into Langkawi, Malaysia a couple of weeks ago. The Port Authority, not the marina, requires insurance coverage and they check the paperwork carefully.
I also received a permit to transit Chagos an uninhibited island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The BIOT was very picky on the specifics of the insurance you carry prior to issuing a permit.

This is useful information, but is there any way to find out what the insurance requirements are in advance without a tremendous amount of calling around? Was liability-only required (I assume so)? I'm planning to cruise Bahamas to DR to PR to USVI to Windward Islands down to Grenada. Does anyone have a suggestion for an insurance company that will cover all the potential stops on the way (except Haiti). If I look at Noonsite for DR, Luperon, for example, there is no mention of requirements to show proof of insurance. If I look at Guadeloupe, it refers to a "boat’s insurance certificate", but gives no details. Presumably I could dig through the French immigration documents to find the detailed requirements, but that's my point. Is there any consolidated list of these requirements for the Caribbean that indicate what kind of insurance is required at each island?

[captlloyd]

AJ+ Audrey, I am having the same problem finding insurance requirements for Cuba and Mexico. You might try the latest cruising guides for the area you wish to cruise. I am buying one soon.