Now that I’ve had my last official day of work on 30 June 2017, we continue to narrow down our potential boats, but the more pressing matter of how to pay (more on that later) and which insurance company to use are now looming large.
To prepare for our pending insurance discussions, we did the typical thing with online searches, looked in forums, and read what other folks have written on their own websites.
Although far from comprehensive, some of the more concise and useful information we came across in one location were from the following:
BoatUS – Five Questions to Ask Your Boat’s Insurance Agent
All Things Boat – Boat Insurance Review 2017
Royal Yachting Association (RYA) – What to look for when buying boating insurance
MoBox – 10 Important Things to Know About Boat Insurance
Where The Coconuts Grow – What Marine Insurance Companies Don’t Want You To Know
That last one is by far the most comprehensive and was the most useful to start with for us. It comes from Jody and Peter of wherethecoconutsgrow.com fame, and since it was published in Sept 2015, it’s still recent so you can trust the information, or more to the point the $$$. Obviously everyone’s situation is different, so do your own homework, but they will definitely get you headed in the right direction and save a lot of long frustrating hours of random searches online.
So far this is the list of questions/topics we will go over with any potential insurance company. It will surely be modified over time, but this is where we are at the moment in no order of priority:
- Personal liability amount
- Depreciated vs actual vs agreed value
- Inspection vs survey and how old
- Hurricane areas and what dates
- Other no-go areas
- Who pays for salvage costs
- Is company hands-on during claim
- Consequential coverage
- Anything excluded
- Loyalty and claims-free discount
- Lift/launch coverage
- Frost/freeze coverage
- Personal effects & guest effects
- Uninsured boater
- Liveaboard
- Deductibles
- Underwriters
- Tender coverage
- Medical coverage
- Pollution/Reef/Environmental
- Personal boating experience
- Country of registration
- Crew size for passage
- Grounding or other mistakes
- Routine maintenance vs professional work
- Breakdown coverage/clause
- Geographic region impact
- Ballpark figure for premium
- Time required to start coverage
We decided that we will start by talking to these insurance companies, and will gauge their potential suitability over the following week(s):
International Marine Insurance Services
McMichael-Davis Marine Insurance
Emails and voice-mails are out, so hopefully we’ll have some preliminary information over the next few days.
Once we hear from each one, we’ll populate the list for each company to help our own decision, and we’ll publish them here for everyone’s benefit.
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