What to do if you are involved in a yacht accident?

Steps you need to follow after a yacht accident:

• The first thing to do after being involved in a yacht accident is to immediately inform the competent authority (ie. Capitaneria di Porto).
• Within three days from the accident you need to formally inform the insurance company. It is always better to call them immediately or send them a fax, so that they will give you a so called “Sinistro” number by opening an accident matter for your case.
• If the boat needs urgent repairs, make sure that before repairing it you have carried out a survey in which it is described what damages have incurred.
• If you think that the yacht accident has been caused by a third party, you need to make the insurance company know about this person or company so that the insurance company will have the possibility to be refunded by the other party’s insurers.

How to be refunded by the Insurance Company?

The first think you need to make sure of, is that your insurance contract fulfills all the requirements for you to obtain an indemnity. It is important to ensure your boat dependently on the kind of risks which you know you might incur more often. However a good insurance should always cover a list of risks such as damages at the engine ad electric system, and any hidden defects on the boat which you could not be able to see. Also your boat needs to be insured in not protected areas as well. These are just few of the numerous options which needs to be added in your contract.

When you sign a contract with the insurer, it is always better to have the contract translated in your language (if you are a foreigner) and to have an expert representing you. In fact some contracts do not include important clauses which cover the most common accidents, reason why sometimes you have the impression to save a good amount of money when you sign the contract, but instead you have signed an agreement which does not protect your specific interests.

In fact, when you sign an insurance contract, the insurance company usually gives you a standard contract which obviously needs to be personalized as per your needs. In these cases you might need the advice of an expert lawyer.

If the contract covers your damage, you need to be refunded within a short term and once you have forwarded the whole documentation to the company.

Documents to be sent to the insurers:

Once you have informed the Insurance Company about the accident, you need to indicate your policy number and to explain in a clear way what happened. You need to add information such as:

• Date and time of the event
• Place of the accident
• Name of the parties involved in the accident and contact details
• Description of the accident
• If there are people who have been injured, you need to indicate their name and the kind of injury that they suffered.
• If there are witnesses, you need to add their names and their contact details.

If the accident involved two boats, you also need to add information such as:

• The name of the other vessel involved, the ship owner name and contact, and the captain name and contact if different from the ship owner.
• All the details of the other boat which potentially caused the accident must be listed: plat number, name, insurance company. These are all information which you need to require to the ship owner or captain involved in the accident. He will need to cooperate with you.

If you have a yacht accident and you need to start the procedure with the insurance company to be refunded, if you have made a mistake with the procedure, or if the insurance company does not want to refund you, please feel free to contact your expert lawyer at info@luxury-law.com/nuovo.

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