Transcript

We at Wells Marine Insurance are a team of dedicated insurance professionals focused specifically on insuring boats, yachts, and the businesses surrounding those industries.

Boat owners choose Wells because we're here.

Family owned and operated company since nineteen twenty.

Because we share that passion that our customers have for boating and lifestyle on the water, it transfers over to the work that we put into the policies that we issue.

We are an independent agent who works with a multitude of different carriers. Wells is different because working with a bunch of different carriers gives us more options when it comes to your risk and what you're doing. Not every carrier is going to be geared for every single risk. So if you're looking for a charter and you're looking to do commercial charter use with your boat, not every carrier is going to write that. What's the size of it? What waters are you going to navigate? It's all going to give you a sense or give us a sense rather of the best carriers that are going to be able to suit your needs.

The lowest rate may not be the best product for you, especially if you are an avid boater and you want to make sure that your navigation match what you're going to be doing this year with your boat.

Claims time, if you went with the lowest rate, it could leave you having not enough or no coverage for your claim or the loss that was occurred.

Because you may be missing navigation that wasn't explained to you, such as you're in Virginia and your cutoff is Cape Hatteras and you every year go to Cape Lookout. Well, you're not covered at Cape Lookout. Once you pass Cape Hatteras, you don't have coverage.

So I would definitely say let's review your coverages and make sure that you have the coverage you need and enough of that coverage to then let's look at then the rates and see if we can find the most competitive rate. Of course, we will always try to find the most competitive, but we want to make sure that you have the right coverage for what you need.

So you can add all kinds of endorsements to your policy if you're wanting to broaden your coverage.

If you're a part time charter captain, you can say, Hey, for twenty four days out of the year, I'm chartering. And we can add those twenty four days of chartering onto your policy.

You have your personal effects, which is anything not attached to the boat, actually. So that's gonna be your fishing gear, rods, reels. Those can be very, very expensive.

Some of the items in your package policy that you might wanna consider is your personal effects coverage because these days a lot of people love YETI coolers. Well, in your personal effects coverage, you might only have a thousand dollars. And if something happens to your boat, well, you know, you don't have your YETI cooler, phones, laptops, anything like that. It's the little things that start adding up, and you wanna replace them because after a loss, it's not cheap to replace everything that you did lose.

On your bigger boats, have your your tender or dinghy. You might have trolling motors. Anything really that you bring on board the boat, any reason they got stolen or fell off the boat or anything like that, that would all be covered. There's all kinds of gadgets you can put on board a boat that you would need coverage for.

You might want to also consider your towing. What's going to be covered in your towing for a grounding? So, you know, do you think five hundred dollars will cover your towing bill? Because those are things that people don't necessarily realize adds up really quick when you have a loss on that specific line item.

So your boat trailer is something that is attached to your policy because your car policy will not cover your boat trailer. Your boat trailer will be bundled with your boat, and usually that's about it. Some small carriers might cover a little bit of your dock coverage, but your dock's not gonna be fully covered. It might just be, say, one thousand is allotted to dock coverage.

So liability insurance is definitely something you should care about. It's very important. Liability is a huge part of something you might want if you're on the water. So your liability is gonna cover your hanging out at the island.

Something happens to somebody that's not a passenger on your boat, your liability will pick that up. Same as your liability coverage on your car, but also it's gonna cover you at the docks if you're backing up and the wind catches your boat in the wrong direction and you hit the neighboring boat, your liability picks that up for you.

A lot of marinas also require you to have specific amounts of liability insurance. Hurricane comes through and your boat does damage, then you need to make sure that you have enough coverage. A good example of that was during Hurricane Dorian when there was a lot of damage done at the Southport Marina, boats on top of other boats, damage obviously to the marina itself and the docks. And the long short of it was that the marina was looking to the clients for additional coverage for their marina. It went down to your insurance carrier and your coverages. Definitely important to have not only the right coverage, but enough of it.

Our office is located on Wrightsville Beach, right over the water next to the drawbridge.

We're here Monday through Friday, and we're ready to help you and answer all your questions about your boat and your boat policy.