Nekton Rorqual Mini-trip report

Wow, sounds like they're extending the potential time out of service until mid-June now! Hope it all goes smoothly.

 

The Nekton Pilot is now being repurposed as an oil rig maintenance vessel... see here http://nektonoffshore.com/

 

Have to say that the crew was top notch and they seem to have got hold of a good cook. They mentioned at the end of the trip that they were taking the boat to dry dock to try and fix it right. With a lot of TLC seems like it could be a great boat. As they say a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money. I'll check out the cat for my next liveaboard.

 

Greetings from Hburg.

See you there if we are lucky. Moved from the 8th of May to the 5th of June with our 11 people.

 

We're booked for June 5th. Does anyone know if this trip is still "on"?

 

BUY "TRIP INSURANCE" !!!!!!!!!!!!

NEKTON :mooner:

 

I just called Travel Guard and they said they wouldn't cover a cancellation due to the company closing its doors unless you bought the insurance when you booked your trip. I've never purchased trip insurance before...now I know not to ever make that mistake again.

They said, at this late date, all that would be covered is missing all or part of the trip due to illness, work related matters, being subpeoned, etc.

If anyone finds a company willing to insure for this at this late date, please advise.

 

Sorry, but I really don't think you're going to find a company who will cover this at this point - no matter how many threads you ask on They basically sell trip insurance to cover "unforeseen" events, they're just not in the business of selling insurance to cover things that may have already happened. A time limit to avoid various exclusions is standard. (Actually if someone were to book this trip now and buy insurance right away, I suspect convincing them the problem was unforeseen and getting them to cover it could be tough.)

It's not necessarily a "mistake" not to buy trip insurance - what you're doing is self-insuring. Easy to think now you should have bought insurance on this one. But if you take a bunch of trips, never buy travel insurance and never have a loss, or lose less overall than you would have paid for all that insurance, you'll be ahead. I look the situation for each trip and decide if I'm going to buy insurance (and rarely do.) There can be all sorts of exclusions that may make it a hassle to actually collect, and you will pay more to have fewer exclusions. Air tickets can generally be changed for a fee, hotels and ops may actually accept cancellations especially for a good reason or let you reuse later, so a trip may actually not be a complete loss. And by definition, a dive trip is a loss you can afford (much as it sucks.)

 

I read the travel insurance offered through the DAN website, based on reading it (and being an insurance adjustor) if you have the policy at least 14 days before the company goes bankrupt, the policy would cover it. Of course, now that Nekton is officially out of business, you can't get insurance on them at this pont.