Dare I ask how much it usually costs to insure a Merlin? After a quick conversation with the insurers, Bishop Skinner who were very helpful, I found I'm currently paying around £115 which suprised me (I'm easily shocked)Thats with about 3 or 4 years no claims. |
Mine was £103 with Bishop Skinner last October for an insurred value of £3500 with claims in 2006 2008 and 2008 with the middle one being a claim against the Bishop Skinner insured Thin Ice which holed Finlandia at the Midland Mug. They have however always paid up realy quickly and never been anything other than a pleasure to deal with. |
There is no such things as no claims with most dinghy policies to my knowledge. |
My insured value is £3500 as well, so compares quite closely. The person I spoke to referred to my policy having collected 15% NCB but this being offset by MRs moving into a higher risk group recently - my policy hadn't moved yet, but it still didn't seem to be especially cheap. So it doesn't seem to be miles out of step but I was curious. By comparison I can potentially wreak more havoc with a motorcycle I insure for £100 per year |
Quite a bit of potential for wreaking expensive havoc with Merlins, particularly in confined spaces full of moored boats in a F6 (the Salcombe experience) |
Bishop Skinner, for a carbonised Winder (3643), is around the £200 mark...and this was the cheapest. The insurers still 'fear' carbon. There is a lot of ignorance about the cost of carbon repairs, etc. The Underwriters aren't sailors, they are just business-people and 'take a position' as a result of previous data. We are currently suffering from the previous 'spurious' claims which 'allegedly' were made in relation to carbon spars, in all classes, not just Merlins, in the early days. |
Craftinsure are £25 PM for my Winder 3645. Sounding a little steep right now but they have always given me 1st class service and Richard is a sailor and knows what he is talking about. I did find they were cheaper for my OK though? |
I had the same issue when insuring my 1959 Proctor mkVIII....No sign of carbon or Mylar and worth only £400 - to some! Even so many insurers mentioned Carbon masts/booms, poles etc as the excuse for the high premium. I eventually insured it for £80 odd through and insurance company that was advertised on the RYA website. |
...those people who 'accidentally' reversed over early cartbon masts which were too stiff/floppy/starting to delaminate, etc!!! |
Once they stopped using 'cartbon' thnigs got a bit better! |
Given the year we had in 2009 for broken masts the insurers can probably be excused for being a bit jumpy, but bit must be remembered that nearly all of the masts broken at the Whitstable champs got stuck in the bottom and at Salcombe it was so gusty that the masts that broken were mostly quite literally blown off the boats. |
Link to Y&Y this AM. http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=155907 |
In my experience bishop Skinner were cheap but incompetent. I ended up with Noble and never looked back. My boat wasn't worth much anyway so the extra premium didn't break the bank. |