Get five or six people involved.
The one we rented was about 13 meters long, which meant that someone could go below to get out of the sun and not feel confined. Someone else could go sit on the forward deck area.
Ours had one cabin forward and two cabins side-by-side aft. At center was a galley and dining area, over the low-and-center diesel engine, fuel and water tanks, and batteries. I'm standing (in black) at the helm on the top deck.
Also carefully consider the characteristics of the canal and the distance you plan to cover. See the next page for more about this.
A lot of mom-and-pop operations have one or a few boats, and you can certainly find them by searching the Internet. What makes it easier are the firms that are really middlemen between the owners and would-be renters. You don't have to somehow find the one small marina with exactly the sort of boat you want, in exactly the right spot, available at exactly the right time. But even through the rental agencies you will need to reserve well in advance to get what you want for boat type, location, and time. Better deals may be available further in advance. We rented the first time about six months in advance, and the second time about nine months.
We rented ours through a company called Crown Blue Lines, they can send you lots of slick brochures. For whatever reason, after finding their web site and getting in contact via e-mail, I found myself communicating with an office in Australia even though I live in the US. That's fine, no problem. Other than a need to call them at specific times to hit Australian business hours from North America, that worked out fine.
Right before leaving on our first trip I wanted to call to verify that everything was OK — make sure that the boat we were planning to rent hadn't been sunk the week before or anything like that. I called their US office, and while I was able to verify that our boat was still above water, I was very unimpressed.
They told me that I was foolish to have rented from their Australian office because "when you pay in Australian dollars it is much more expensive than paying in American dollars." OK, fine, whatever, we've already paid, just let us have the boat...
But then when I checked, it was actually slightly cheaper to have rented it through the Australian office because of varying rates in conversions from Euros to US dollars versus Euros to Australian dollars (and then to US dollars). Apparently Crown Blue's US office did not realize that US dollars and Australian dollars are different currency and therefore 1 A$ is worth a little less than 1 US$.
Would I rent from Crown Blue again? Yes, as long as it was from the Australian agency! Our second rental was from Crown Blue, using the Australian office exclusively and things worked out great:
Outdoor Travel Australia
PO Box 286 Bright VIC 3741 Australia
Tel: 1800 331 582 or (03) 57501441
Fax: (03) 57501 020
E-Mail: info@outdoortravel.com.au
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
