Hire boat trip on the River Shannon

Shoulder season is better as in its a cheaper cost.

We used to rent from Emerald Star, in order hired their Consul, Horizon 3, Royal Mystique and Vision 3, but for 2021 their prices became insane. COVID greed I suspect. I always had my eye on Silverline but they were more expensive than ES but not anymore so we have hired from them for the past 3 years. 2021 we took their Silver Shadow from Banagher to Belleek over 13 nights and for the last two years (2022 & 2023) we hired the Silver Ocean for 10 nights. The Ocean is their flagship boats (they have 2 of them) and it is a beauty of a boat to live on and drive.

As for cost. Silverline and others do special offers. In the case of Silverline up to the end of April (I think) and from the end of August they do good deals. For the past three years by going at the end of August we have availed of their special offers. 12 nights for price of 8 and 10 nights for price of 7.

So for this year the costs were for a 10 night trip:

Hire cost: €2490 (split between 4 adults).

Insurance: Option of returnable damage deposit of €1,000 to be paid on arrival or the option of a non-refundable insurance waiver of €250 reducing your refundable deposit to €150.

Fuel: This obviously depends on how much cruising you do! For 2023 we went from Banagher to and as far north as Lough Key, Boyle and Leitrim Village, with a detour in to the Grange Lakes as well (west of Dromod).

I estimated that we would use just over 35 engine hours and the fuel bill would be estimated at €586. With a 10 day cruise I planned to refuel at Carrick-on-Shannon for peace of mind, though she probably would have had enough fuel to last the full 10 days.

In reality the engine hours used were 38 hours, the extra being mainly for at evening time at locations without shore power we would have had to run the engine to top up the 12v domestic battery, especially if using microwave or tv for long periods of time. The boat was far more fuel efficient than expected as I had estimated the bill on consuming 8.5 litres per hour (I found that somewhere on the web). The average figure was 6 litres per hour consumed with a total figure of 229 litres which worked out as €436 in total.

Emerald Star in Carrick were charging €2.00 per litre, while Silverline were a far more reasonable €1.80 per litre. I could have reduced the fuel bill by a few euro if I hadn't put as much in to the boat at Carrick. I thought it would take more and I actually ended up having it full.

Also got to take into account food etc. Eating out every night is expensive and not all locations have a pub or have a place that serves food. Some places may only do food certain nights of the week etc. We mainly had lunch and dinner on the boat and only eat out 3 times for dinner over the 10 nights. The facilities on the boats for cooking are good, gas hob and oven etc.

Hope that information helps and do drop me a line if you have any other questions.