This was one hot topic for us over the last couple of weeks. What does it cost to have proper insurance for your sailboat? Since we are planning to do extended off-shore cruising, the perfect insurance for our boat should not only be a general liability insurance but we also wanted a full comprehensive yacht insurance that would cover any damage on our boat, no matter what would happen. Tough task.
From my experience with my previous 37 foot sailboat, which I sailed for one year in Florida I know that there are a lot of variables to look at when it comes to get insurance for your boat. Such as hurricane season, region and or country you are sailing, ocean passages, single handing, charter business and so forth.
One thing was very obvious from the very beginning: We wouldn't go for the cheapest boat insurance and neither did we like to sign some sort of online boat insurance with a broker or company that we wouldn't know. A lot of research showed that this isn't working out for most of the cruisers out there. Pretty cool to pay less if nothing happens, but if the worst comes to the worst you are most likely lost with one of the budget insurers.
Well, what does it actually cost to get the perfect insurance for your sailboat? The following quotes that I have received are tailor-made for our particular boat.
The first company I was looking at was the one the previous owner had her insured with. The cost for one year with general liability insurance and a full comprehensive coverage was EUR 1,500. Not bad I thought. The covered area was Northern Europe including the UK and down to France. They were asking the same amount for anything south of France including the Western Med and off-shore to Madeira, the Azores and Canary Islands. This was a large insurance company specialized in yacht insurance.
My internet search on topics like boat insurance, yacht insurance quotes, average cost of boat insurance or boat insurance companies returned a lot of search results and I spent the better half of a day on the phone to get even more quotes. I turned those down, who wouldn't give me a price indication over the phone straight away. I have spoken to boat insurance companies in the US, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Prices for a combined package with general liability (+/- EUR 2 Mill coverage for the liability part) and full comprehensive coverage brought back offers in the region of EUR 1,200 up to EUR 1,900 for the European region.
Funny enough these so called specialized boat insurance companies were the most expensive ones with the most exceptions on the part of the comprehensive coverage.
Now comes the fun part. Over the last couple of weeks I was also trying to remember the name of the yacht insurance broker that I had for my boat back in Florida. I remember them as a small German-based company with global reach, which tailor their boat insurance offers to the specific needs of long-term cruisers.
Last week I finally remembered the name and called that lady straight away. Guess what? She remembered me. I found this very impressive as our last contact was like 6 years ago. Within an hour I had a comprehensive offer in my inbox, which covered everything I wanted for the price of EUR 960. A week later I signed the papers.
The best part is their reputation among the cruisers. Something happens in a remote place? No problem, you call them, drop them an email and they immediately take over with no worries left over for you. Those examples have been reported more than once by fellow cruisers all over the world.
I don't want to drop names here and I am not related to this company at all... but if you are interested in a contact, please let me know and I would be happy to give you more details.
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