Boat insurance

(We have a special guest blog contributor today. Everyone put your hands together and give a warm welcome to the captain of cheap himself, Eric! Take it away, dear...)

If you're going to be using that shiny new boat of yours at the cottage make sure you insure it, both to cover any unforeseen damage as well as liability for those times when you drive over that luckless swimmer by accident.  


Because our boat is more than 15 years old, most insurance companies required a completed Marine Survey before they would cover us.  A handy list of marine surveyors in Ontario can be found here.

Be careful though. There are no regulations governing who can be a marine surveyor. You should pick someone that belongs to an association (like SAMS) to ensure that you're not getting some guy who fixes bikes and does Marine Surveys on the side.

This kind of Marine Survey is useful if you are buying a boat and want to make sure it is in good condition (like taking a used car to a mechanic to check it out before you buy). A more detailed survey would be a good idea if you didn't know the history of the boat or you didn't know the people you were buying it from and wanted to get a better feel for what you were buying (and make sure it wasn't a lemon). 

The Marine Survey only looks into the condition of the boat and not the motor itself (though they do note the type and make of it for insurance purposes). The surveyor could have done a more thorough survey than the one we requested for the insurance company, but since we already had the mechanic look at the boat and we had already bought the boat it didn't seem necessary. 

Everything checked out in our survey and two things were noted.  One was to make sure the battery was strapped down properly so it doesn't move around (the battery is already in an acid proof battery box).  The other was to replace our fuel line with one that can withstand ethanol in fuel without degrading.  Most gas (even for boats) contains up to 10% ethanol and this can lead to condensation in fuel tanks that are stored partially empty for long periods of time as well as deterioration of the fuel line over the long term if not using a USCG Type A1 neoprene line.

With the report and the pictures of the boat sent off to the insurance company, all I need now is to finalize the policy and we're good to go.

Eric