Boat Safety
By Mike
Teigen
Another side of Spring Preparation:
Ring....! Ring....! Ring....! Hello, Yes, this is him, What! What
are you talking about? I don’t know anything about any accident. It
could not have possibly been me; my boat has been sitting in my
garage the whole week. I don’t care what you say, you have the wrong
guy! I don’t even own a blue boat, I did, but I sold it this past
winter and.................(Oh No! Did I ever get a copy of the
title change? Did I notify my insurance company to remove that boat
from my policy when I added my new boat?
I know none of us have ever had this happen as we are always on top
of things, and would never allow the excitement of a new bass boat
cloud our judgment when it comes to taking care of responsibilities.
The reality is, if we don’t take care of those little details, we
actually can find ourselves in a situation just like this. For all
we know, the individual we sold our previous boat to has no
experience operating his new Nascar on water. If that is the case,
we could find ourselves or our insurance company liable for what
might be either injury or death to someone else on the lake or
highway.
Things such as this do happen every year, and even if we are not
directly responsible, we very possibly will still need to be
represented legally at a rate of $200+ per hour to prove that we are
in fact not at fault. The blame always seems to follow the money,
and if the new boat owner does not have coverage, they will
certainly be looking at the previous Owners possible lapse in
coverage or proper title change to find it. In the “Education”
portion of this web site, I have read many well written and useful
articles from spring boat and equipment preparation, bass catching
techniques, and even warnings about boat purchase scams to watch out
for. All this information is for our benefit. Now, can you imagine
after waiting all those months of winter too finally get out and
enjoy the sport we all love, your time and gas money is being eaten
up due to something as simple as this.
If you did change boats this winter or spring, make sure you get a
copy of either a cancelled or rollover policy from your insurance
agent and keep it in a safe place. Both boat and trailers for rigs
the size most of us are driving, do in fact have titles. Make sure
you transfer them and also keep a copy of them. We all work to hard
to be able to afford both our toys and the time to enjoy them, to
have to be laying awake at night worry about a problem such as
described at the beginning of this article. If we are going to be
laying awake at night, allow it to be from the uncertainty of; what
bait, color or location I should start in tomorrows tournament, or
“DID I REMEMBER TO PLUG IN THAT CHARGER OR NOT?”
Hope your summer is problem free,
Mike Teigen
