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Last July my boat sank at my dock. Root cause was not officially determined, but my guess it had to do with a battery went bad, thus but running the auto bulge pumps, allowing the slow leak through the driveshaft seal to sink the boat over a 2 week period.
When I bought the boat in late 2017, I searched the forum for insurance companies and saw a lot of favorable recommendations for SkiSafe. After 2.5 years, I needed to make a claim. The initial salvage by SeaTow went off without a hitch and how I expected an insurance company to handle a boat sinking. SkiSafe paid SeaTow directly and I didn’t need to play the middleman. This is where SkiSafe stopped meeting my expectations for an insurance company.
Once I got the boat out of the water (mind you this was now 8:00 pm on a Friday night) and on the trailer, I called around all day Saturday to find someone to pickle the engine. The boat was taken and the engine and trans were pulled to have diesel pumped through and spun to pressurize the oil system. I had to pay this expense out of pocket, but was told that the service would be covered. However, it would count against the insured value of the boat. SkiSafe did not have any recommended repair places, and I didn’t trust any of the local marine yards since I’m in brackish water and everyone has crab/fishing boats, cruisers, or sail boats. The “local” MasteCraft dealer didn’t want to touch it since they had too much work already and don’t do interior work. The shop next to them wanted $1,000 just to provide an insurance quote. So I contacted Viper Customs to see if they’d take a look at it since they have had good reviews on here as well.
I had to rent a pickup to put the engine and trans in the bed shrink wrapped on a pallet and tow the boat form MD to TN. I dropped the boat off with Jim at Viper, and got a repair quote a few days later. I sent this to my adjuster at SkiSafe and expected them to either authorize the repairs or consider the boat totaled since the cost was within $5k of the insured value. What they did next was completely unexpected. They took the quote and depreciated all the parts by 65%! Since most of the cost was in new parts, this left me with a check for less than half the value of my policy!
It took from late July until early February to finally get my boat to be considered totaled and collect the remainder of what SkiSafe owed me. My warning to everyone, please read your policies to ensure that they don’t depreciate your parts! It is typically 10%/year up to a maximum of 70% depreciation. So if you have a 7 year old boat insured for 100,000, you may only get $30,000 to repair your boat if it is deemed repairable. I had to make many many many phone calls, write mAny emails and do a lot of leg work, including handling the sale of the salvage boat in order to receive the final value of my policy. I would not recommend SkiSafe to anyone out there.
I’m not sure how to rotate these pictures on my phone, but here’s what the boat looked like sunk at the dock.
When I bought the boat in late 2017, I searched the forum for insurance companies and saw a lot of favorable recommendations for SkiSafe. After 2.5 years, I needed to make a claim. The initial salvage by SeaTow went off without a hitch and how I expected an insurance company to handle a boat sinking. SkiSafe paid SeaTow directly and I didn’t need to play the middleman. This is where SkiSafe stopped meeting my expectations for an insurance company.
Once I got the boat out of the water (mind you this was now 8:00 pm on a Friday night) and on the trailer, I called around all day Saturday to find someone to pickle the engine. The boat was taken and the engine and trans were pulled to have diesel pumped through and spun to pressurize the oil system. I had to pay this expense out of pocket, but was told that the service would be covered. However, it would count against the insured value of the boat. SkiSafe did not have any recommended repair places, and I didn’t trust any of the local marine yards since I’m in brackish water and everyone has crab/fishing boats, cruisers, or sail boats. The “local” MasteCraft dealer didn’t want to touch it since they had too much work already and don’t do interior work. The shop next to them wanted $1,000 just to provide an insurance quote. So I contacted Viper Customs to see if they’d take a look at it since they have had good reviews on here as well.
I had to rent a pickup to put the engine and trans in the bed shrink wrapped on a pallet and tow the boat form MD to TN. I dropped the boat off with Jim at Viper, and got a repair quote a few days later. I sent this to my adjuster at SkiSafe and expected them to either authorize the repairs or consider the boat totaled since the cost was within $5k of the insured value. What they did next was completely unexpected. They took the quote and depreciated all the parts by 65%! Since most of the cost was in new parts, this left me with a check for less than half the value of my policy!
It took from late July until early February to finally get my boat to be considered totaled and collect the remainder of what SkiSafe owed me. My warning to everyone, please read your policies to ensure that they don’t depreciate your parts! It is typically 10%/year up to a maximum of 70% depreciation. So if you have a 7 year old boat insured for 100,000, you may only get $30,000 to repair your boat if it is deemed repairable. I had to make many many many phone calls, write mAny emails and do a lot of leg work, including handling the sale of the salvage boat in order to receive the final value of my policy. I would not recommend SkiSafe to anyone out there.
I’m not sure how to rotate these pictures on my phone, but here’s what the boat looked like sunk at the dock.
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