Best Boat Insurance for Fisherman Nationwide Insurance

First off I’m referring to my own situation and satisfaction from my boat insurance with Nationwide Insurance.  Nationwide doesn’t know I wrote this although I’ll be sending them a copy to make sure I didn’t violate any clause that I didn’t see.

I picked up Nationwide Insurance back a couple of years ago for my 99 Javelin for the specific reason of protecting my brand new Evinrude E-Tec because as we know the money lies within the outboards now a days.

After a great spring of running my new rig and enjoying the performance of an older boat that has been renewed by repowering instead of spending north of 60,000.00 on a new rig (which is what I suspect will be the way of the future) I found myself out on Rend lake in an evening tournament.  Fortunately the bite had been good to me early and I found myself with 4 keepers giving me all evening to find my limit so I decided to run across the lake to run and gun though the lake had swelled up considerably with strong winds blowing from top to bottom which can be hazardous here.  I was jumping waves when I got half way across the lake and noticed a funny feeling in the performance of the boat.  Once I got to a calmer side I opened the throttle to look back and see the transom was flexing (YIKES!!!).  When I shut down I immediately opened up my back hatch to see what had happened and the evidence was made clear on inspection of the back of the boat.  Two solid cracks running parallel from the bottom of the boat all the way to the top where the fiberglass had detached.  I eased the boat back to the ramp and made it home without anymore damage.

The next day I got in touch with Nationwide Insurance.  After a couple of callbacks and speaking with a fiberglass expert, who concluded undoubtedly that the problem was from an impact with the motor.  There was only one problem…The old motor was gone!  I had just repowered with a brand new outboard and had no evidence of a collision as my new motor didn’t have a scratch.  This caused major issues with the insurance company as it would with any insurance company.  I was able to get in touch with the gentleman who purchased my old motor but he had pieced it out over the winter and had just sold the lower unit (bummer!).  To make a long story short, Nationwide was trusting enough to ask me to take the boat to a boat expert and have them break down the transom (which they said they would cover) and if there was no sign of transom rot, they would gladly pay for the damage.  I thought that even if I didn’t get the settlement I was quite satisfied that they at least gave me the opportunity, even though they held all the cards.  Upon inspection there was absolutely no transom rot and 3 days later I received a check in the mail covering all costs outside my deductible.

I just received my renewal for the upcoming year and I can promise you they will be getting their check immediately as I can say from my experience that they treat their customers more than fair!