TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Vacation insurance

We (2 couples) are planning our first bareboat vacation this November. We have never worried about any travel insurance on any of our previous vacations, but I’m considering doing it this time.
I’d appreciate any pros, cons, and comments!

Thanks, long time lurker, first time poster

Here is a general post that I have made in the past regarding trip insurance in general. Never done a bareboat trip myself, so specific issues regarding to bareboat charters in particular, will have to wait for someone else to respond.

The first thing that you need to determine is what perils are MOST important to you to be covered and how much you are willing to pay to cover that risk.
Insure My Trip allows you to compare different insurance policies straight up against each other and helps take some of the confusion out of the process. Insure My Trip is a TTOL sponsor and if you book through the link here on TTOL, we get a small commission and your cost is EXACTLY the same. Especially if you don’t understand what types of coverages are available, and the cost and the dollar limit coverage for each type, Insure My Trip is extremely helpful.

SkyMed is ONLY emergency medical evac. Most other travel policies have a component of medical evac in them, but you do need to look at the limits of coverage on other policies, as some have something like a $25,000 limit, which is NOT sufficient for the Caribbean, as it often will cost $50,000 or so for a true medical evac. SkyMed is also a TTOL sponsor and again, if you book through the link here on TTOL, we get a small commission, and your cost is exactly the same. SkyMed does offer annual policies, which can be very useful if you travel a lot. SkyMed is different than most any other medical evac policy because they take you HOME. Most other medical evac policies will transport you to the closest medically appropriate facility. For example, if you live on the US West Coast, but the nearest medically appropriate facility is in San Juan or Miami, you and possibly your relatives might have to stay in San Juan until you are cleared to travel further, which could be a long time.

Especially now that we are older, we ALWAYS book insurance that includes medical evac insurance. Now, we often book Allianz for cheap coverage for medical evac and emergency medical care, as our personal medical insurance will NOT pay out of the country, or it is all out of network, which means HUGE deductibles. If we book Allianz AT THE SAME time you book your air through the airline, it can be pretty cheap. We recently paid $62 for both of us for an Allianz policy with $50,000 medical evac and $15,000 emergency medical coverage, for an 11 day trip. The policy provides a small amount of trip cancellation/trip interruption/baggage delay insurance, but the main purpose for US is the medical evac and medical coverage insurance. We usually use it only for air tickets of relatively modest cost and a hotel of relatively modest cost. If it’s going to cost you $10,000 for your hotel or boat, then probably Allianz isn’t your best bet at all.

One note regarding trip CANCELLATION insurance. READ the terms of the policy, as far as what qualifies for it to kick in. Usually it will kick in if a person travelling becomes ill, or an immediate family member, but let’s say you are in a relationship with someone to whom you are not married, they are not travelling and THEY become sick. Many policies won’t cover that circumstance. Also, check to see what coverage there is for pre-existing conditions. Also, IF IT IS PURCHASED WITHIN A VERY SHORT TIME OF WHEN THE TICKETS ARE BOOKED, usually around a week, SOME trip cancellation policies will kick in if you decide to cancel for ANY reason and/or will cover pre-existing conditions. Usually those policies will cost more, but if you have a situation where you think you might need to cancel because of a work situation or a family member’s medical condition which qualifies as pre-existing under the policy, those types of coverages can be VERY important.

Spectrum - Annual Multi Trip - Platinum

I believe it is something like £150 per year for the two of us.

https://www.spectrumtravelinsurance.co.uk/annual-multi-trip-travel-insurance

As Carol says, each person’s circumstances will differ. We have an annual medical evacuation plan with Medjet Assist, to whom we switched after our last company stopped covering individuals.

Our medical insurance covers us world wide, but many do not, so verify that.

We own our home, so no cost there, but a boat charter can be expensive, so you may want to protect that investment.

Airfare is another thing. You can buy refundable tickets, or use miles that you can turn back in. If your nonrefundable tickets are cheap enough, then you can take the risk of losing them.

Until we started going to BVI on sailing trips about seven years ago I was never that interested in the extra expense of travel insurance. Our first BVI trip was a crewed charter AND scuba certification trip - high expense and risk. We got insurance for the first time. I did not think the cost to cover two people was really that high. Since then I always consider trip insurance and not just for our BVI trips. In September 2018 my family had a beach house reservation for a week on the east coast of the US. Hurricane Florence put an end to that; however, because we had insurance my husband and I were able to get a last minute flight to Miami and had a wonderful time in Key Largo. Sadly, we had friends scheduled to be at the beach (different house) that same week. They did not have insurance and lost their investment.

This year we are using the coverage on our Chase credit card. It seems to be very similar to the coverage we were getting through CSA. If you are using a credit card check the coverage - you may have more than you realize.

Thanks y'all for the insight! I can't even describe how excited we all are about this trip!

I will jump in here with a recent observation. I am planning a charter in October this year and was going to get insurance through Insure My Trip as usual. I was really shocked to see how high rates are now. I have never seen them so high. Guess the insurance companies are trying to recoup the money they lost due to Irma.

Trip insurance.......that is a yes for us.

We had always taken the TRAVEL GUARD TIP INSURANCE. thru the moorings or sunsail. Now chartering with conch, we get the trip insurance thru AAA.....( Auto club ).

Well, you dont need it, until you need it.

We had a sailing vacation planned to Belize. We book our boat, air, etc, early. This was the moorings, two weeks sailing and snorkeling Belize.

Two weeks before our trip, we sailed over to Catalina. Just the two of us. Turns out, some of my old students and friends from tour sailing club were moored a few boats over. They dink to our vessel
for boat drinks. Then, the ran us ashore, since we had dinner reservations there in Avalon.

Going up a very steep dock ramp, full moon, very high tide, I tore my calf muscle. I actually heard it snap. I was limping around, but could do nothing about it, until we got back overtown, the next day.

Wound up, our Belize Trip was in the tank. We also had another couple that was going with us. I contacted the moorings and the Trip Insurance kicked in. The airlines, boat, hotel the first and last nights, everything was
100% covered. For all four of us.

That was several years ago, and to this day, for sailing, or eco vacations ...internationally , we have trip insurance. Do read your policy however, and get medical as well. if something serious occures, it may be that you need to
be medivaced, from the small far off island in paradise.

There is our factual experience.

Denny and Erica

My general advice is that if could can't afford the loss, insure.
When I'm paying for a large family trip I definitely get the insurance. It seems to provide a greater value in that case.

When we were young and foolish we never thought about trip insurance, now we are older, if not wiser, but always plan on trip insurance. It just becomes part of the cost of the vacation.

I have another angle on the question. Being the ripe old age the gov'ner thinks I must have Medicare, and Medicare only covers in the US and my secondary only covers 20% no matter what, I'm mostly concerned about offshore medical coverage, not trip (airfare, charter, hotel, etc). I have had no luck finding JUST Medical and Medivac insurance for a trip. Any leads?

As I said in my first post in this thread, go to Insure my Trip. You can enter a very small amount for hotel and air, and then look at the medical and medivac insurance coverages and cost. We did just that for a recent trip. We had frequent flyer tickets, so we put down $200, which is the cost to re-deposit AA miles, and nothing for hotel. Try it!!!

I will. I had been told if not putting down the actual, entire, cost of the trip it would be cheaper but could be considered fraudulent and void any coverage. But I will look! Thank You!

As Carol said, use the Insuremytrip sponsor link. They have medical plans.

Looked into this and it's very promising. It seems it does not necessarily have to include total trip cost but secondary and primary insurance are a consideration as well as pre-existing conditions (fortunately not a factor). Thanks Carol!!

Yes, for sure, that is a very real consideration, secondary versus primary coverage. We always try to make it primary coverage, especially for medical evac. As far as fraudulent, I guess I never thought about that, but like I said, if I'm using frequent flyer miles, the actual cost to me if everything craps out is the cost to re-deposit miles, so I don't see how that could be fraudulent? Airfare in general should not be a major part of trip cost to the Caribbean, anyway..

Look above in the sponsor list for SkyMed.

Rick--I could be wrong, but I don't think that SkyMed covers medical insurance, just medical evac??

If by "secondary" you mean a Medigap plan, there are plans that cover medical costs outside the US. My Plan N and my wife's Plan F each cover foreign travel. Maximum payout is $75k lifetime, but that is enough for most of our travels and current health situation. Note, you may need to get approval to "upgrade" to a higher level Medigap plan.

You're correct as I just read that they do not cover any medical expenses whatsoever except transport. My bad.

OK, I wasn't sure, but I thought they only did medical evac. No problem.

We have used the AIG travel insurance the Moorings markets on two occasions - once a death in the immediate family and another time the captain (me) broke his leg a few weeks before the trip. Like any insurance claim we got the run around but eventually recovered all of our out of pocket costs. Well worth the premium when there is $10k plus invested in the trip.

Thanks to all that replied!
We have visited the BVIs before, but were land based. This will be our first charter and, by far, the most expensive trip we have ever done. I'll share this thread with our group, and we'll decide from there!


Cheers!

I went through Insure My Trip and ended up deciding on the AIG medical only (includes an evac) plan. As I mentioned earlier I was concerned about Medicare not covering and my secondary only picking up 20% of medical costs should a big event happen. Great website, couldn't have been easier

Glad you were able to find what you needed. And I hope you don't have to use it!

You might also check your credit card. Our CitiBank AA card has trip insurance coverage, including med, for everything we charge on the card.

Our St. Martin October 2017 trip obviously did not happen and the card came through with no problems.

If you're looking at trip insurance, one of the things to remember is that there's a 30 day window (on many policies) from the time a storm hits for coverage. In other words, if a storm hits on Oct 1 and the area is still not up and running in Nov (like with Irma which hit in Sept.), it will not cover you because it's beyond the 30 days. If the storm hits Oct 30th, then you would be covered for Nov.

We share the cost of the boat with the rest of our crew. We have had a few times when one or two of our crew has wanted
to back out of the trip at the last minute. With the trip insurance, the rest of the crew is covered. We tell the backing out crew that they can
file a claim with the trip insurance company, and if they have a covered reason for changing their mind, they will get their deposit back.
It's not fair for everyone else to pay more because someone changes their mind. In the event of a true emergency, everyone is covered!

You should check DAN coverage. It is not just for diving.

Hi all,
I am wondering about the trip insurance you get when chartering. I just called InsureMyTrip and was told nothing they have will cover us for anything if we are not hiring a professional captain.

Thanks for your thoughts.