When you book a Naora leg, your berth is confirmed and the other eleven berths on that leg are filled in the order that the bookings arrive. The leg fills. The member who books the Atlantic crossing in December and whose circumstances change in July, the medical situation, the professional obligation that cannot be moved, the family event that was not anticipated, is the member who finds that the berth they can no longer use cannot simply be returned to an available pool.
The other members booked around their confirmed presence. Naora tries to be flexible. The leg is the leg and the berth is the berth, and the flexibility has its limits when the departure is sixty days away and the twelve-person manifest is complete.
The cancellation insurance is the coverage that protects the member’s financial position in this scenario. Not Naora’s financial position, the member’s. The cancellation insurance reimburses the non-refundable portion of the leg fee in the covered cancellation scenarios: the illness, the injury, the bereavement, the redundancy, the specific life events that the policy covers as the legitimate reasons that the person who booked in good faith and cannot travel should not bear the full financial cost of.
What to Look for in a Cancellation Policy
Not all cancellation policies are equivalent. The cancellation policy that covers only the most serious scenarios, the hospitalisation, the death of an immediate family member, leaves the member exposed to the scenarios that are less dramatic but equally real: the professional obligation that the employer has decided is non-negotiable, the medical advice to delay travel that falls short of hospitalisation, the family situation that is serious without being the specific category the policy covers.
The better cancellation policy covers the broader range of the life events that prevent travel and specifies the covered scenarios clearly rather than leaving the member to discover the exclusions at the point of the claim.
The Naora team provides specific guidance on the cancellation insurance before every booking. The policy that is worth buying for the offshore sailing leg, the coverage categories that matter, the exclusions to check, the claim process that the member needs to understand before they need to use it, is the guidance that the pre-boarding insurance conversation covers.
The cancellation insurance is the last piece of the complete insurance picture for the Naora member. The boat is covered. The travel is covered. The diving is covered. The cancellation insurance covers the scenario where the member cannot get to the boat. The complete picture means there are no gaps that the circumstances reveal at the worst possible time.
