Liveaboard Insurance Recommendations?

[NausetSailor]

Does anyone have any suggestions on insurance for liveaboards? We'll be in NE Florida during the winters and in New England during the Summer/Hurricane season.

[TooCoys]

We've had Geico for the last year. This is the third straight year of increasing insurance costs. I think we paid $1900 in 2019, $2700 in 2020, and our renewal just came in at $3100 - even though we've had ZERO claims. Needless to say, we're shopping around as well.

[Shrew]

I'd carry two policies. One for Florida Winters and the other for New England Summers. I wouldn't bother discussing your personal matters beyond the need for insurance, the vessel age, make, model, and condition, your experience, the time period and geographic region for the coverage.

Sometimes it simply makes it easier in the long run to complicate things slightly.

[SeaStory]

We use Markel via a Gowrie agent, which seems to be reassigned each year. But then, our only communication with them is annual renewal, with a new survey every 5 years.

[Vera Cruz]

I’m shopping it as well right now for New England all year. Geico quoted me ~1800 annually and a niche firm W3 insurance out of Florida found me a policy for ~1600. The W3 policy has high deductibles tho, not sure who to go with yet. Worth looking into them however.

[BillKny]

Insurance is such a complex topic, that people who give a simple answer rarely understand all the issues. Insurance for liveaboards is a special case but many people ignore a lot of the complexities and really are just talking about "boat insurance."

Do you have significant assets other than your boat (either financial or real property) that you need to protect from liability? Enough that you need to have some kind of personal liability insurance for events unrelated to your boat? Do you have valuable things in storage that you need to cover from various hazards? For "normal" land-based people these things are covered through their homeowners or renters insurance. Many liveaboards leave these things unprotected.

This can be totally OK if you have so few assets that no lawyer would bother to come after them, or if you chose to accept the risk as a conscious decision. Most, however, seem to bear these risks though ignorance rather than choice.

True "liveaboard" policies with protection for things in life other than just the boat related things are rare, and a very special kind of thing.