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MOORING LOCATIONS AND BOAT INSURANCE
Boat owners often ask how the location of their boat affects their insurance policy. There are a number of factors of course; to begin with a boat that is kept in a marina is subject to different risks than a boat on a tidal estuary mooring.
Nowadays, boaters like to sail much further afield and some people even use their boat for missionary work such as the Californian couple Jean and Scott Adam, who had been sailing the world on the S/V Quest yacht for more than seven years. In this instance insurers had to consider the risks posed by pirates, as well as geographical features such as reefs and storm patterns. Not surprisingly, piracy cover is now automatically included in some insurance policies.
Another factor is the cost to insurers of handling claims and the cost of actual repairs in locations that are further away from home territory - sometimes involving repair facilities whose expertise is an unknown quantity, and sometimes having to arrange to move the boat to another location for repair. If the boat can be repaired locally, the claim may include the cost of transporting, for example, a replacement mast from the supplier to a far away island.
Once the insurers have assessed all the relevant factors including the mooring location, they decide on a premium rate, which is then usually applied to the value of the boat to work out the annual premium.
