After two nights in Carcassonne we headed back downstream to the Le Boat base at Trebes, to clean up the boat and hand it back the next morning.
A few additional thoughts/comments on Le Boat. If I remember correctly, they charge €160 (or maybe it is $160) to clean the boat; you can avoid this charge if you clean the boat yourself. +1 & friend scrubbed the inside while Mr A & I scrubbed the decks. The boat was spotless; certainly far cleaner then when we picked it up.
Next morning we were ready for inspection. The engineer man came on board and read the engine hours; that was it! No one looked at the state of the boat; no one at all. No wonder that many report that the boats are less than clean when you pick them up.
The main issue is that the hire contract states that you must be off the boat by 0900; however the office doesn’t open until 0900! As a result you have a dozen, sometimes more boats trying to “check out”/ settle up their bills, all at the same time. The staff just don’t have time to check any of the boats. Furthermore, it results in many of the crews trying to book the 2 taxis (from the company that Le Boat use) at the same time. An absolute shambles! Le Boat booked our taxi for the day after we needed it; fortunately, we had asked them to book our taxi for an hour earlier than required which gave us sufficient recovery time and we made our train with 5 minutes to spare.
Anyone with even the slightest bit of common sense would realise that this would not work. If you are going to have all boat hires changeover on a Saturday, then this is obviously going to be your busiest and most critical day and you need to staff the office accordingly. Sure this would cost extra in wages but the changeover day is the day that makes or breaks this operation.
If it were me, the office would open at 0700 on changeover day and boats would be allowed to check out between 0700 and 1000. Similarly at the end of the day; those checking in for their cruise would be able to do so from 1500 to 1800 (not “at 4-00PM”). And I certainly wouldn’t close the office for an hour and a half for lunch on the busiest day. Yes this is France, but the changeover day is the critical day for this entire operation and it is a total cough-up.
As it is, the situation is totally unprofessional; as I said above it is an absolute shambles.
While we all had a great time and enjoyed our cruise, I would not book with Le Boat again, just on their check-in, check-out process alone, let alone the poor condition of their vessels. I am unable to say whether any on the other companies are better.
