Chubb's refusal to provide the H2O Ski Plus endorsement on renewal may not be as bad as I first thought or as bad as it first seemed. Even absent the H2O Ski endorsement, Chubb's policy may still provide tournament coverage in many circumstances. From Chubb's letter that Kelvin got, Chubb may not want to cover tournament boats, but that letter is not the insurance policy. The only exclusion that I can find that potentially takes away coverage for a Chubb insured boat is the "commercial use" exclusion. Commercial use is mentioned on the H2O Ski endorsement, but Chubb is removing that from its renewal policies. No where in my Chubb policy is "commercial use" defined. Chubb's policy has 2 1/2 pages of Definitions, but commercial use is NOT defined nor is it defined in any of the coverage sections of the policy (ie. liability section, property damage section etc.). In the opening paragraph of the Definitions section, Chubb says that in this policy, we use words in their plain English meaning. Words with special meanings are defined in the part of the policy where they are used. Commercial use is not.
Since Chubb does not define commercial use, I looked at a Webster's dictionary to try to understand the plain English meaning of commercial use. There are four descriptions of commercial in the dictionary I used. In my opinion, use of a boat in a tournament is not commercial use, especially if one does not accept compensation for the use of the boat. Even if compensation is accepted, no boat owner is making any money. The compensation at the prescribed level in the AWSA towboat policy manual is reimbursement for wear and tear, depreciation etc. There is no profit or profit motive. Nobody is making a living pulling tournaments as one tries to do in commerce. How is tournament use commercial use??? I don't think it is. But this is only my opinion, and I claim no expertise. Use your own judgment and seek the coverage you want/need. Promo boat operators have a different situation than people like me. I would allow my boat to be used in a tournament only if promo boats are unavailable.
Again, no one should rely on this, but it is worth thinking about.