Up at 7 am, breakfast the net and our bible reading. Then Reneé went to the boat, and I worked on the blog. This is a bit backwards for us, but I have found that the WiFi here in the inn is pretty limited in the late afternoon as too many people are streaming video. So, I have been pretty far behind. We got the bill for importing the sails and the halyards, and for our stay in the Inn. On the boat, the fiberglass repair has been done, now we have to wait for the bottom paint and getting put back in the water (tentatively scheduled for tomorrow about 1 pm). Again, the details about the repairs to the keel are in the post titled ROCKS, and that will get uploaded when all the repairs are done.
At the end of the day, we got our survey completed. John the survey guy sent an electronic copy to me, and I reviewed it and sent back my comments. He agreed with my comments and updated the survey. This did not really change the survey results it was more about details of the boat, like the number of hatches etc. Then we headed up to the Mexican Marine (a local marine store) and enjoyed a drink at their open house. Then back to the inn. An hour or so later John delivered the hard copy of the survey. We coordinated paying for it and will send the electronic version off to our insurance agent to see if it helps us with insurance.
So, for those of you who are not into boating, a survey is like a home inspection, sort of. Before you buy a boat you have an independent survey done, this is done by someone NOT in love with the boat to give a critical eye to the boat and make sure you know what you are buying. Sometimes you pay for a survey and at the end of the survey, you walk away from the deal. It means you pay for the survey (typically $15-25/per foot. The bigger the boat the higher the per foot charge. We got a fairly good price on our survey at $15 per foot, but that is still $675. I think our survey when we bought the boat in San Diego in 2018 was about $1500. Which included a rigging survey and was in a higher cost area. Since we replaced the rigging in 2019, I did not see the value of getting a rigging survey again (and not required by the insurance).
So, the first survey is done to determine whether or not to buy the boat, the insurance company uses the survey to determine whether or not to insure the boat. Typically they require a new survey every 5 years or so. We are at 3 years, so typically would not have to get a survey done for a couple of years. But, the insurance companies have had some significant loses where they had to pay out more than they wanted to, so they have made it difficult to get insurance on boats. The older the boat the harder, the worse condition the boat is in the harder, the less experienced the owner/captain is the harder it is. Etc. We have found quite a few cruisers who only have liability as they basically can’t get insurance on their boats. As we have a loan on this boat, we are required to keep insurance on it. We have changed insurance a couple of times, since we bought our boat. The first insurance company limited us north of about Mazatlan, the current company limits us to about Acapulco which means we need to change companies to allow us to continue south to Puerto Chiapas at the south end of Mexico. I think that the new insurance company will be the last one until maybe we get through the Panama Canal. Oh, and of course each change of insurance includes an increase in price..
