Just a comment about travel insurance, but I have no experience with the Travelex brand. There are more reasons to insure a dive trip besides just trip cancelation due to weather. Blackbeard's is a rather inexpensive trip - although you will have other expenses such as airfare - but the insurance policy may also cover things like sickness and injury, and being transported to the nearest chamber for treatment, or property loss and theft of expensive equipment.
When we were younger my husband and I didn't bother with travel insurance and we experienced some losses but we just absorbed them and figured that they were offset by the accumulated savings of not buying travel insurance. We started getting insurance as our trips got more expensive and as our parents got older and their health deteriorated. We both have siblings that were always attentive and caring toward our parents, but it can still be hard to leave the country, and travel to remote places when loved ones are very ill. You never know what will happen and you may have to return home suddenly. Thankfully it never happened to us, but it did happen to some of our friends.
Our parents are gone now but we've continued to buy travel insurance for major trips, especially trips outside the US where our own health insurance may not be accepted. We get the annual, mid-level DAN insurance and also Travel Guard insurance for big vacations. You can negotiate what you want to cover. For instance we do not need to include "adventure travel" coverage because TG doesn't consider scuba to be adventure travel; but we do add on coverage for "transportation to the hospital of your choice" because that is important to us.
This topic has been discussed many times here on SB and there is no "right answer" so you have to make your own best decision. Everybody hates insurance because it is expensive and you don't want to use it, but it may come in handy when you need it. Perhaps @Wookie could share his perspectives because he owned and operated a liveaboard for many years.
I have posted this information in the past, but it is about an event (not connected to me) that helped me to finally make up my mind about the wisdom of taking travel insurance.
A dive shop owner named Gary McNabb retired and closed his shop and moved to Florida. While all these changes were taking place he let his DAN insurance lapse and forgot to renew it before making a dive trip with his wife to Ambergris Caye, Belize. On one of the dives he surfaced too close to the boat and suffered a serious head injury. He was transferred to a hospital in Belize City for surgery and critical care and later transported by air to Texas where he died in a hospital.
His expenses outside the US were very great and so his friends set up the GoFundMe page at the link below to try and help his family. I didn't know Gary McNabb but I am guessing that he wouldn't have wanted to leave behind a terrible financial burden for his family. He paid for insurance for years and probably didn't use it much, but the one time he really needed it, he didn't have it. So now I try to make sure that we will have it - but I hope that we will never need it!
But it is up to each individual - you will have to make your own decision - unless the LOB or dive trip requires you to take insurance.
Click here to support Gary McNabb Family Support Fund organized by Barbara Brower
When we were younger my husband and I didn't bother with travel insurance and we experienced some losses but we just absorbed them and figured that they were offset by the accumulated savings of not buying travel insurance. We started getting insurance as our trips got more expensive and as our parents got older and their health deteriorated. We both have siblings that were always attentive and caring toward our parents, but it can still be hard to leave the country, and travel to remote places when loved ones are very ill. You never know what will happen and you may have to return home suddenly. Thankfully it never happened to us, but it did happen to some of our friends.
Our parents are gone now but we've continued to buy travel insurance for major trips, especially trips outside the US where our own health insurance may not be accepted. We get the annual, mid-level DAN insurance and also Travel Guard insurance for big vacations. You can negotiate what you want to cover. For instance we do not need to include "adventure travel" coverage because TG doesn't consider scuba to be adventure travel; but we do add on coverage for "transportation to the hospital of your choice" because that is important to us.
This topic has been discussed many times here on SB and there is no "right answer" so you have to make your own best decision. Everybody hates insurance because it is expensive and you don't want to use it, but it may come in handy when you need it. Perhaps @Wookie could share his perspectives because he owned and operated a liveaboard for many years.
I have posted this information in the past, but it is about an event (not connected to me) that helped me to finally make up my mind about the wisdom of taking travel insurance.
A dive shop owner named Gary McNabb retired and closed his shop and moved to Florida. While all these changes were taking place he let his DAN insurance lapse and forgot to renew it before making a dive trip with his wife to Ambergris Caye, Belize. On one of the dives he surfaced too close to the boat and suffered a serious head injury. He was transferred to a hospital in Belize City for surgery and critical care and later transported by air to Texas where he died in a hospital.
His expenses outside the US were very great and so his friends set up the GoFundMe page at the link below to try and help his family. I didn't know Gary McNabb but I am guessing that he wouldn't have wanted to leave behind a terrible financial burden for his family. He paid for insurance for years and probably didn't use it much, but the one time he really needed it, he didn't have it. So now I try to make sure that we will have it - but I hope that we will never need it!
But it is up to each individual - you will have to make your own decision - unless the LOB or dive trip requires you to take insurance.
Click here to support Gary McNabb Family Support Fund organized by Barbara Brower
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