Sandboarding

Called Trailfinders today re insurance for sandboarding. Although
multiple other kinds of boarding are included as standard, sandboarding
is not - they quoted me £15 extra on "any policy" to include it. Now in
reality this is pretty negligible, especially given they're more
expensive than other nominally comparable insurers anyway. (As probably
waffled about before, I am only considering them because they were
pretty damn good when I broke my arm.) However, even if I decided "I
want to go sandboarding in San Pedro, that is the most desirable thing I
could do in the three weeks I have available", there is probably at best
a 75% chance of me making it there, and in reality it's probably down at
the 25-50% level. So despite spending that much on beer routinely, I am
a bit dubious about investing that £15 for something I might never do.

It does also cross my mind that, if sandboarding adds 10% (ish, from
memory) to the premium to a policy that (if memory serves, for the gold
annual multi-trip) includes winter sports and all sorts of stuff, just
how freaking dangerous is it? I suspect the extra premium doesn't
accurately reflect the risk (after all, they didn't express much
interest in whether I was a hard-core sandboarder who'd be out on the
dunes for 90 days in the next year, or someone planning to try it once)
but still.

I'm well aware that a) humans in general assess risk poorly (in which
category I don't include their actuaries, but as per the previous
paragraph I don't think their view is really being taken into account)
and b) I personally suffer from that problem in spades, but still.

Oh, and yes, the possibility occurs to me that the sandboarding tour
place will offer insurance specifically covering that day's activity.
But the one place I asked at in San Pedro on the 2010 trip didn't even
try to flog me cover, despite me asking questions (knowing full well I'd
never get an honest answer) about how risky it was, and I suspect in
general these places are not the most cautious businesses in the world.
I struggled for a word there and plumped for "cautious"; I am sure they
are not unscrupulous, they offer what they promise and maybe their
instructors are even keen on teaching random tourists how to fall down a
sand dune in 35 degree heat, but by that same token, I imagine they are
not run with a view to dotting the i's and crossing the t's of details
like insurance.

Something to think about anyway.