In the end the lack of insurance was the straw that broke our back. It was like dominos where that one piece of the puzzle brought it all crashing down.
Owning a cruise ship, every day is money so the clock is ticking from day one of buying the ship to becoming revenue neutral. During that time you are shelling out money to keep the thing going. The sooner revenue neutrality comes, the better. This wasn't a boat (bring out another thousand), it was a boam.
We were trying to play nice. We were in talks with Panama's presidential office, the marine authority, ministry of tourism, etc. They all told us they wanted our ship in Panama. But they all did what they could to make sure they could get what they could out of the project with no regard for how that affected the success.
The marine authority classified the ship as a seagoing vessel though we were pleading with them to not classify it as such as it would have bad consequences.
The demand for cabins was nil. Even with the lowest prices we could possibly offer and break even, nobody wanted to live on it.
Our ship management company was not very useful when trying to get us insurance, more of a spectator of "let's see how this 'crazy' project is treated by the strict, good ol' boy club of insurances". The insurance companies were almost toying with us, asking for information on how we would deal with X or Y...we give them some reasonable response that we think they will be ok with only to the response of "denied" (no explanation). Nobody ever let us speak directly to the insurance companies to discuss what they would accept for various scenarios ("highly unprecedented", when we asked).
We could have come up with another solution, we could have done some blockchain type of P&I insurance...over time. We focused on complying with maritime and Panama law as opposed to gaining an expertise in maritime insurance (assuming that surely a private insurance company would want money). So being turned down by all of the companies caught us off guard.
With time of the essence, no support from the seasteading nor Bitcoin community that we were trying to serve, the Panama government reneging on their promise to work with us and the final stroke coming from lack of insurance we had to pull the plug before paying to cross the canal. We had a day to make the decision so we went with it.
We bought the ship at below scrap prices, we burned through a few million and are selling it for higher scrap prices so dollar wise we even out. But lost potential, Bitcoin wise, we can put it down as "losing" half of our investment.
I was not the big investor in the project (as usual). With the bitcoin price being up and the main investor being a member of the Vladmir club...expect something brilliantly insane to come next (I am the guy in the spotlight because our main investor speaks his mind too readily...he makes me look like a US congressman in comparison).
I will likely sit out this next adventure and go into hibernation like I did after Thailand until I am pulled back out into the world by the next project.
I chose seasteading as my passion project because I have been following it for 10 years and wanted to see something actually done instead of people just talking about it all the time and I see it as one of the shortest avenues toward a modicum of freedom. I have time to decide my next steps. Now I focus on myself (and my wife) and take a good break from things for a while.
Thanks Elwar for the post and appreciate how challenging this undertaking would be.
If all you need is a certificate of currency for P&I, then one way through the puzzle is to get a $20 million policy with a $20 million deductible.... it means the policy is worthless, but you get your piece of paper. The certificate of currency will not show the deductible value and if the regulator asks to see the policy wording you can tell them to fuck off because the policy is commercial in confidence and they only need the certificate of currency.
Enjoy taking the time off and look forward to reading about your next adventures.