"Calif Bill" wrote in message
...
What kind of cost for the week of the canal boat? Which areas of France
were you visiting?
Bill

We booked through a company called Le Boat - they have a web site.
Evidently they are a broker or booking agent or something, because the
company we actually got the boat from was Connoisseur. I can't tell you the
price off the top of my head - my wife served as accountant on this trip.
If you email me I'll be happy to get that info for you.

LeBoat is only one of many companies that do this stuff. You can book
passage on a full service hotel barge, or do what we did - self drive boats.
We were a party of three families and we rented two boats in the 35-40 foot
range. The boats were very well appointed. Our boat had three double
bedrooms and could sleep four more in the "living room" area. The other
boat was larger and had four double bedrooms but could sleep only 2
additional in the living room. Very nice galley, upper deck, etc.

Both Le Boat and Conniosseur gave us *excellent* service. However, we
picked this particular company and the particular boats we had based on
availability. One should really book this sort of thing a year in advance.
We booked about 7 or more months in advance and it was almost two late.
Availability was getting limited.

We spent 7 days on the Yonne River / Canal du Nivernais route. Again,
there's many, many routes in France, Ireland, England, Germany, etc. And
although this route was excellent for wine and cheese tasting, small village
and countryside touring, etc., I'm sure there are many more depending on
one's personal taste and expectations.

The boatsmanship / piloting was minimal - no wake type speeds, very little
maneuvering. Sometimes it was a little tricky getting into the narrow locks
or docking if there was a wind, but not nearly as tough as docking or
getting a boat on a trailer in a strong cross wind or current! I felt very
comfortable piloting the boat immediately even though I'd never driven a
boat this large before and had never operated an inboard/rudder type
steering system. The "aha" I had was that if you imagine you're steering
the stern and not the bow, it works much better.

The other boat in our party, the larger one, had bow thrusters which made
maneuvering even easier.

All in all it's a tremendous way to see out of the way places, do some
boating and *relax*.

If anyone has more questions, I'll be happy to answer them, but gotta go
now!

The Yonne flows to the Canal du Nivernais