Ensure you can insure

Before you buy a boat, call a marine insurance company. Ask them this simple question, "Do I have to be Neptune, god of all the seas, to get insurance from you?" You will find that 99% of the time the answer will be yes. Keep calling companies until someone says no. These calls will save you time later on in the process.

I learned again that when you play with other people's money (and other people's liability) you play by their rules. The bank told me that I needed to have insurance within 10 days of signing the papers. No problem. After all it only took me half an hour to get car insurance! Besides, I had a survey done, I had everything on the survey fixed, I had it re-surveyed... what more could I need? Oh right, experience... And a fiberglass boat... And somewhere to live other than the boat... And a smaller boat. As it turns out, no one wants to insure a first time boat owner when they are buying a 48' 1964 wood boat to live on.

Here's the part that bugs me... they say I have no experience "with boats of this size." And, I haven't taken USCG safety or navigation courses. And, I don't know what it takes to maintain a boat like this. (Hold on while I put on my ego hat.) Along with learning to sail when I was young, and racing a 27 ft sail boat, and operating a few other random pleasure boats, I have navigated and piloted a 580' long 40' beam 40' draft submarine, through a 500 ft wide channel. I have been officer of the deck of a 16,000-TON boat, by myself at midnight in a huge storm in the Pacific Ocean. I have been in charge of the operation and maintenance of a nuclear reactor. If I can't figure out how to pump my own shit tanks on a regular basis, or seal up a leak in the hull, or apply paint and varnish on a regular basis, or how to be careful when piloting a 3.5 ft draft boat, or how to ASK FOR HELP WHEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING then I don't deserve to live. Or get insurance. RRRRRR. Frustration. None of that counted for anything. Now if only the sub had been wood!

So on day nine I got insurance. I had called every marine insurance company I could find. And when they turned me down, I called every marine insurance broker those companies recommended. Finally it was Robinson, Maurer, and Welts of Seattle, WA who came through for me. Thank you. I think my policy is though Lloyds of London; the company that insures everything. They even insure models' hands and boobs and the like for a billion dollars or whatever. And apparently they are willing to take a huge risk on my $60,000 boat.

The moral of the story is... Ensure you can get insured before you buy a boat. Or be Neptune, and buy a 22 ft Bayliner.

-Tom