The first eleven tips in Part 1 covered things we can do to make ourselves and our boats more insurable.
Now let’s dive into actually finding and negotiating offshore insurance cover.
29 Tips To Get Insurance For Offshore Voyaging—Negotiating Cover
24 CommentsReading Time: 9 minutes
More Articles From Insurance:
- Getting Insurance For Offshore Voyaging—Understanding The Problem
- 29 Tips To Get Insurance For Offshore Voyaging—Us and Our Boat
- 29 Tips To Get Insurance For Offshore Voyaging—Negotiating Cover
- Going Without Insurance For Offshore Cruising?
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We have been cruising across the N Pacific for the past 3 years, out of Seattle. We have a 20 yo custom steel 50 ft cutter made to very high standards in New Zealand. When we left it was understood we would be leaving our boat in several ports along the way to return home at times. When we left we had a policy at about 1.5% of value. A week before it was to renew, we were dropped by the carrier. After scrambling we ended up with a new policy at 3 % of value. This year ( November) we tried to get ahead of the renewal. Our agent in California spent a fretful week looking for a secondary broker, eventually landing us with a broker in Serbia, then of course to Lloyds. Now we are at 3.5 %. We were told that this year the offshore broker market is getting even tighter. Now in Japan we are planning to leave our boat in a very good marina. I am not looking forward to the next renewal cycle. Just some info for those headed out!
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the very complete report. Not a lot to say, except to commiserate. The big take away for me is the lack of any sort of ethics on the part of the carrier that dropped you on such short notice. A very disturbing trend.
Wait… you mentioned your “new boat” twice. Did I miss something? What did you get?
Hi Ken,
TBA, hopefully later in. the week.
I look forward to hearing the rundown.
For what it’s worth on the insurance series… I’m trying to renew our policy right now. Our boat is in Lisbon, Portugal after having crossed the Atlantic in 2019 (after cruising the US east coast, the Bahamas and the eastern Caribbean for several years). Our current insurance company is ghosting us about the renewal – incommunicado, as it were. We began working with the Gowrie Group on a Jackline policy. A few months of communication, in fact. We only needed to complete an insurance survey once allowed back into Portugal. They even asked for our surveyor’s credentials and resume… which he spent some time putting together. I received an email last week from the broker notifying me that they’ve changed their mind because our hull value is less than $100k. We have a 1981 Morgan 382. Not sure what we’ll do now. We may end up with a liability only policy. And we’re simply looking for coastal cruising insurance while in the Med for a few years. Frustrating for sure.
Hi Ken, contact Pantaenius, I’m sure they will work something out.
Hi Ernest,
I think Ken is US flagged/resident, in which case Pantaenius won’t even talk to him.
John is correct. Pantaenius told me to get lost several years ago.
Hi Ken,
Putting you through all that only to say no is, as the Brits would say, a very poor show, as is the other company ghosting you. I have had some of the same sort of experiences. Seems like many members of the insurance industry are just not professional any more.
I’ve seen a worrying number of lapses of ethics and professionalism throughout the insurance industry recently. The “we want to put a 3rd-party’s GPS tracker on your car and we can’t tell you how it works or how its data is used” trend is perhaps the most egregious recent example. What you’ve seen with these marine insurers is another.
Much of the blame must land on the companies themselves, of course. But some of it can certainly be assigned to business schools that have, for decades, been treating ethics as an afterthought for compliance purposes, and churn out armies of manager drones who can’t see the people behind the numbers. Plus, there’s a lot of Dunning-Kruger Effect and Peter Principle in play; the company needs to keep going, so it puts the people it can find in the roles it needs to fill whether they truly understand the situation or not, and a lot of them end up thinking they’re doing a great job managing the business when they simply don’t know how to make decisions and are just coasting along on top of the corporate policy handbooks.
Insurance isn’t a sexy business. It takes a certain, rare kind of mindset to do a really good job of managing it, and most of the people with that mindset aren’t interested in this kind of work. Sometimes you have to skip over a lot of brokers and agents before you find one who really knows their stuff.
Hi Matt,
I could not have said it as well myself! Mind you I do get quite eloquent, and noisy, about the way MBAs are taught to look at the world by today’s B-schools. The focus on share holder value above all else is at the root of many of the world’s problems, and it’s not even a good long term business strategy. One of my favourite rants.
If this is too far off topic, feel free to delete. But your comment about liability made me wonder if it makes sense to have ownership of the boat in an LLC, or similar, to avoid someone going after all your assets should it get ugly?
Hi Peter,
Sure it’s an option, but do keep in mind that the boat being in an LLC will not stop an insurance company going after you personally as master in command and bypassing the company structure. The other thing to keep in mind is that running a corporation is a hell of a lot of work in filings and compliance. AAC is a corporation for obvious reasons but the regulatory load is huge both in time and money, and gets worse every year, even for such a small entity.
To leave some numbers here – Pantaenius insures my 20-year old steel boat for damage at 1.1% of the taxed value with EUR 1.5k deductible (hull value is EUR 40k). General policy is new for old w/o deductions, up to the insured value. Salvage would have no deductible and no limit. Agreed sailing area at the moment is the complete Med (don’t know if that can be viewed as “offshore”, probably not).
Liability is EUR 10mio, at EUR 69.88.
At least I believe this is a fair deal…
I’ve just finished reading all that has been said about securing offshore insurance. How depressing! I’m glad to say that aside from my lack of experience, everything else looks good according to what has been published here. Thanks for all the great advice and insight.
I’m planning on a transatlantic next year and looking for insurance. I’m working with a company now that is at least still asking questions. We’ll see where it goes and I’ll report back when I have something to contribute.
Tom
SV Ad Astra
IP 445 #20
Hi Tom,
Good to hear you are getting somewhere. Yes, please share your final experience here. Member reports are by far the best part of this.
Update…
I applied for a policy to cover Ad Astra from the US to EU. The cost was 2.5% of the stated hull value with fairly low liability coverage, 300k. It does seem really expensive but at least they will cover me. I have never been on a transatlantic so I guess I should be grateful?!?!
The tips and insight offered by John and Amanda are very much appreciated! Thank you.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the update. Disturbing about the low liability cover though. This situation just seems to get worse and worse with each report.
Sorry Phyllis.
The situation for Canadian residents seems to be getting worse. I have been looking for insurance for a Europe based boat and am finding nothing from a Canadian broker. Even the double broker arrangement seems broken. Canadian authorities seem to be objecting to a Canadian broker having policies from underwriters outside Canada.
If anyone has any current solutions let me know here. I’ll post an update on what I find.
Hi Stanley,
I am not sure about a solution, but I suggest you give Gary Golden a call at Manifest Marine, 540-785-0398. I happened to be wanting to call him anyway and asked about your being from Canada and the boat being based in Europe and he said neither precluded starting a discussion on your insurance needs. Does anyone have experience with MM and Gary? His father started the well thought of IMIS ins for cruisers back in the day and Gary sounds like he is carrying on the tradition.
Let us know how it works out: you are far from alone in having insurance questions/concerns.
Good luck, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Hi Stanley,
That’s disturbing indeed. I don’t have any information at my fingertips, but I have a buddy who is Canadian and just heading out for the Caribbean from Nova Scotia. I will check with him and see what he is doing. May be a while for an answer since I think he is at sea.
A useful video on the topic
https://youtu.be/S-nxcWY4Rmc
The holding company approach can get around the issue for uk underwriters. It adds cost but provides access to a bigger market.