Thanks JustJason. That was the kind of great information that I was hoping to learn. It is a big insurance company - one of the good ones in my opinion. Last summer when a guy heavily damaged the back of my truck with his e-bike, the same insurance company paid for everything including a nice rental.
The current agent has been extremely nice, even texting me because my boat shop has been extremely slow with their estimate. I am a big believer of being nice in these situations, until its time to get ugly. There's no reason to go there (yet).
My "yacht" is a 2008 Alumacraft Navigator CS165 with a 2009 Suzuki DF90A and a single-axle 2008 Karavan trailer. Everything was in great shape prior to the accident, with only standard paint scuffs from 17yrs of fishing and docking. I have already made a spreadsheet tallying all of the gear mounted on my boat such as trolling motors, batteries, etc. If you can give me a price range, that would be great.
My boat is definitely still usable. It's just a big dent in the side that I would prefer isn't there, but probably will end up having to live with assuming their 90% offer is well below the repair cost.
My first phone call after the incident was to my insurance company, also IMO one of the top ones. However, they told me that they were not going to open a file on it unless I called them back. They instructed me to work through the other party's insurance, but to call back if that went nowhere.
You are very welcome. I won't worry about the trailer; that's a separate issue. Just provide you with the data. Region does play a role in the values; I am using SW Florida because I don't know where you live.
JD Power states the following $5,715 to $6,470.00
BUC states $9,946.00 to 10,946.00
ABOS (Which is Price Digest) states $9,604 to $11,570.00
There aren't many comparables where the recorded sale of the vessel is under a year old for the exact boat, but I can tell you this much:
1. A 2010 Navigator CS 175 with a Mercury 150 sold for 15K even on 05/23/2026 in Iowa; this included a single-axle trailer.
2. A 2009 Navigator CS 175 with an Etec 150 sold on 09/11/2025 for 13.5K in Illinois. It included the trailer.
These comparable sales are larger vessels with much larger engines. Because these are not ideal comparable sales, I would fall back on the book values.
Anyone who hires an appraiser is paying for an opinion, whether you like that opinion or not. Different appraisers will appraise a little differently, but good appraisers should explain what data sets they rely on and why, which data sets they exclude and why, and how they did their math.
For your boat, I would exclude the comparable sales that were available; it's a larger boat, with a much larger engine.
Looking at the book values, I would exclude JD Power; it's an outlier compared to ABOS and BUC. Normally, if I can get 5 or more values for the vessel, I would exclude the highest and lowest published values as outliers and average the rest together. In this case, because there are 4 values, 2 from ABOS and 2 from BUC, I would just average those together. For that, you would calculate ($9,946.00 + $ 10,946.00 + $9,604 + $11,570.00)/ 4, which is $ 10,516.00.
Another appraiser may exclude the $9,604 amount as a low and the $11,570 as a high, and average the 2 remaining numbers. If they did that, they would get 10,446.00, which wouldn't be wrong as long as they explained what they did and why, but we would be splitting hairs.
These numbers are for a REASONABLY average boat, REASONABLY equipped with REASONABLY average upkeep. Would you like to guess what the key word is there?
If you have updated electronics, updated upholstery, anything better than what the vessel came with when new, or considerable upgrades, I could consider some portion of those items, BUT I would need receipts, especially for anything custom, like paint or upholstery. I wouldn't care about a stainless prop vs. aluminum, or a 3-year-old stereo or anything like that. All of these boats come with trolling motors. If yours is under 2 years old and you have receipts, I would at least consider a bump; if not, then no. Getting down to that level of nitty-gritty is too time-consuming given the boat's published value. You also have to be careful how hard you push, because offers can and do change. For example, if you push hard for the XYZ item and then, all of a sudden I noticed your gear case is leaking lube, I may make an allotment for the item you want and then reconsider my initial position based on the new information, and then make a deduction for the expected costs of gearcase resealing.
I would need a photo of the data tag on the trailer to appraise it, but it's probably a $1,000 trailer, give or take.
If you get an offer and don't like it, ask the carrier to pay for an appraisal by a 3rd-party independent marine surveyor who hopefully knows what they are doing.
There is this weird 80% thing with insurance companies; they all like 80% of something. If the repair option is off the table (and it should be; you would have welds where you never had welds before), if I were the adjuster, I would probably offer you 80% of 10,500, which is 8400, and let you keep the boat as an opening position to see if you would take it. If we negotiated back and forth, I would probably go as high as $12,600.00 before reconsidering or simply saying no. It would all depend really on how nice you were to me and what kind of day I was having.
Remember that you do have some leverage with that trailer. If they want to offer you a number and take the boat, make sure you tell them the trailer isn't included because you use it for your other boats; it's not damaged, and it's not part of the claim. It cost a lot more than a trailer for me to send the tow guys out to your house to pull what would end up being my boat of your trailer without damaging the trailer and the boat any more than it's already damaged. That trailer is your Willy Wonka golden ticket if things go sideways.
Good luck!
