Is yacht insurance necessary?
As with a car, a yacht can be insured in various ways. Here are the main ones:
something like comprehensive insurance — full cover
something like compulsory third-party motor insurance — well, you get the idea.
We only have
third-party liability insurance
(the equivalent of compulsory third-party motor insurance). We took it out because marinas require this kind of document. Such insurance is essential if you plan to stay in marinas and do not want to pay for repairs to someone else’s yacht if you accidentally (God forbid) damage it.
Choosing an insurance company
Choosing an insurance company did not take long and happened automatically
with the purchase of the boat
. The previous owner, a German, had insured the yacht with Germany’s Pantaenius, and, as it turned out, with good reason: Pantaenius’s rates proved the most attractive for us on the yacht insurance market.
Our insurance experience. Year one
The transfer of ownership of the boat coincided with the expiry of its insurance. After completing an application on the Pantaenius website, a couple of days later we received an email requesting additional boat details and scans of the registration documents.
That same day, we sent all the necessary paperwork. An invoice arrived:
€197
for one year’s
third-party liability insurance
.
The insured amount was €6,000,000. The area of cover was worldwide.
Hooray! Now even the most demanding marina staff would have nothing to complain about, and we could happily scratch other people’s boats (just kidding). But the story does not end there...
Yacht anchorage on the Maroni River, on the border between Suriname and French Guiana
A second term 😉
The captain prepared well in advance to renew the insurance a year later. A month before the policy expired, we did the same thing as the year before: submitted an application using the form on the website. The reply came immediately: “Sorry, but from now on we do not deal with yachts flying the Russian flag or yacht owners holding Russian passports. Goodbye.”
Ah, “sanctions.” Scratching his head thoughtfully, the captain sent the same application, just to be sure, to the same Pantaenius, but this time to its UK branch. The reply was the same: sorry. And “sorry” it truly was, because at that point Pantaenius’s attractive prices were beyond dispute. After trying a few other insurance companies, he chose none of them. He kept putting off the decision until tomorrow for as long as he could.
Two days before the insurance policy expired, we checked our email—and could not believe our eyes: there was the same set of documents as the year before—the insurance policy plus the invoice for payment. We instantly paid the invoice by card using the form on the main Pantaenius.de website and became the lawful holders of an insurance policy for another year. We were lucky: the insurers had forgotten that their regular client was a Russian citizen.
A third term :)))
What do you think happened the following year? No, not this time—they sent nothing... They had finally figured out who was who.
The penultimate day of the insurance term. We sent a message using the form on the website, saying that we wanted to renew the policy. The reply: WE DON’T DEAL WITH RUSSIANS! Sorry for the inconvenience!
The more they refuse to deal with Russians, the more stubbornly the Russians refuse to give up :). So we wrote to the email address of the very employee who had sent us the previous policy and invoice. And voilà! A couple of hours later, a new invoice and insurance policy for the following year were in our inbox. We paid the invoice instantly (before they could withdraw it) and once again became holders of an insurance policy from a company that “does not deal” with Russian citizens and yachts.
We are waiting to see what they come up with next year, and we are ready for a fourth term.
But then, in October 2016, two emails arrived from different Pantaenius employees, both unanimously expressing a desire to terminate our contract. However, one of them wrote that if we changed our flag, they would be willing to continue working with us. We are definitely not prepared to change our flag, so we are waiting for the contract to expire. Perhaps we will manage to renew it again?
A good sign 🙂
More about yacht insurance:
As Plan B, we are keeping the insurance company
Generali
in mind.
Mike, a Swiss man and our neighbour at the anchorage in Mindelo, said that he too used to be insured with Pantaenius, but later switched to Generali. There he insures not only his liability, but also the value of his catamaran. For €550 a year, the yacht owner gets:
Boat insurance—for €75,000,
liability—I’m not sure, but I think €2,000,000. Coverage is worldwide.
And as an absolute last resort, there is the company Rosgosstrakh.
As for whether a yacht needs to be insured for its full value, that is something everyone must decide for themselves. Having calculated the probabilities of various unpleasant events, our captain is refraining from taking out any other types of insurance for now.
Friends, please share your yacht insurance experiences in the comments!
And here we talk about
whether it is comfortable for a family of four to live aboard a yacht
.
Water park aboard Lady Mary