Insurance Woes

[tomodda]

Folks:

I've already cried about losing my beloved Daysailer #37 to a storm-downed tree in another post. It is what it is. BUT....

Haha, now I'm finding out about the gory details of my homeowner's insurance. To my surprise they do NOT cover the boat being hit by a tree on my property. in fact, if car hit by tree is not covered either, no vehicles. Fortunately, neither of my cars was hit, but that's not good... Anyway, I'm treating the boat as a "sunk cost" (literally). I bought it, trailer and all, for $800. I've poured about $5K into it, but at least some of it is recoverable (sails, rigging,etc), and I've had more than $5K of fun from the boat over the years. All good. But, now the insurance company won't even pay my disposal costs for the boat. Since the tree also smashed the trailer, getting it off my property and off to the junkyard is going to be "Interesting." Needless to say, the junkyard is going to charge me a fee as well. I asked my insurance agent - "For next boat, can you give me a full coverage quote?" and he said "I can't insure any boats over 20 years old, we don't do antique vehicles". Wonderful!

So, I'll get it figured out somehow, I'm not complaining. I wrote this just to CAUTION future readers that you may want to double-check your insurance and calculate boat disposal into your total cost of ownership. As I've written before, the "Achilles Heel" of our old (relatively cheap) DaySailers is the mast - thanks to shipping, a new mast costs more than the boat. Turns out that we should think about insurance and disposal costs/practicality as well. Since Good Seamanship is all about planning ahead, give these insurance problems for your boat a think when you have a chance.

Sigh. This too, soon shall pass.

Tom

[tomodda]

I just remembered, I'm a BOATUS full benefits member, they cover trailer breakdowns. Yay! I read the fine print, they only cover trailer breakdowns that occur WHILE TOWING, not while sitting still under a falling tree. Boo! Oh well.

I also coulda maybe bought boat insurance with them... they do boat insurance thru GEICO but "special situations" are covered by 3rd party. I'm not even gonna ask, but I'm sure a 65-year old boat is a special situation. Bottom line, I didn't buy boat insurance in the first place because a 550lb sailboat is too light to need liability coverage, car insurance covers my tow for liability coverage on the road, and I knew the hull ($800) wasn't really worth insuring. I just never figured in the pain in the butt of getting a wrecked boat off my property. Hopefully, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event!

[GreenLake]

Self-insured is sometimes not a bad option.

The way to get your boat moved is to buy a new one, drop it on the hard, use the trailer to haul boat wreck and trailer wreck. Then pick up the new boat from the lawn and go sailing!

[GreenLake]

PS: buy another DS, so you can reuse all the parts yourself