My boating tastes are fairly simple. lawn a 16 ft Plymouth Pilot that I use for local trips, mainly in the harbour or up the river. It's a small, family boat, and its biggest adventure is to go round to the swimming bays just outside the harbour. There must be thousands of boats like it, probably most of them used for angling or, like mine, just for pottering about.

The value of my Pilot is quite mod¬est, mainly because it's about 20 years old. (I'm not sure because I don't have any history other than it sank a few years ago, before I bought it). Probably the most valuable part Is the engine because I had a reconditioned one fitted last year. This became necessary after I saw the local mechanic sticking his fingers in his ears every time I went past with the boat. Anyway, I thought it was time to get the boat insured.
The actual value, at my estimate, was around £2000 maximum. I wasn't too concerned about insuring the boat itself - indeed if that was all that was involved, I was happy to carry the risk myself. What concerned me more was insurance for third party risks. After all, if I ran over another boat and, worse still killed someone, the liability could be very high if it could be shown to be my fault.
Therefore judging that I wanted third party insurance to the tune of, say, £~ million (just to be on the safe side) I phoned round a few insur¬ance brokers. The results were fairly uncompromising and, even stranger, all the quotes were identical at £104. Frankly, I thought that an annual pre¬mium of about one twentieth of the total value of the boat, was a bit on the high side even for an old boat like mine. In relative terms I don't pay that much for my car where I would have thought the risks would be higher. Not only that but one broker told me that the insurers would insist on a survey because the boat was over 10 years old. Such a survey was going to cost over £100 which, added to the premium, was really adding up. It then turned out that the £104 was the minimum premium for any boat. and, whilst I was being offered the minimum, it didn't seem very good value. I got the strong impression that they just didn't want my busi¬ness.
As I really only wanted third party cover I thought I'd found the answer with a company offering third party insurance. Their quote was a shade over £40 and I thought I was getting somewhere. And this was third party cover of £2 million! I started to think how I could possibly run up a bill of this amount in an accident with my littfe boat. If I hit any other boat except, perhaps a dinghy, I was going to come off worst and it was hard to picture an event where the costs would esca¬late to £2 million. Then I learnt that £2 million was the minimum third party cover available.
In the end I found a policy aimed at boats like mine. Navigators and General have what they call Small Craft Insurance for speedboats, rac¬ing dinghies, sailboards and other craft up to 5 metres in length. My Pilot just scrapes in on size and for £50 I get £1 million third party cover and insurance for the boat. It seems pretty good value, even though I'm not covered for racing!
It took some time and effort to get what I wanted and I could easily have paid twice the premium for the same cover if I'd listened to those first brokers I contacted. The fact that they all quoted the same amount (even though the quotes were from different companies) makes me wonder about price fixing. The moral is that you should shop around to get exactly what you want. Find an insurer or broker who has a policy tailored for the type of boat you own. In my case I actually got more than I wanted - cover for a trailer for instance - but t~ere are some things you have to learn to live with when it comes to insurance.