Tag: charter

Corona forces us to rethink – precisely, traveling was influenced. Chris und Carsten Stricker from Berlin had actually planed a long-distance trip. This turned into a one week boats trip on the Havel. Here is their exciting and amusing report. Hi! It’s Chris & Carsten once more. Our original plan for 2020 was to travel to the States again, to lovely California. Those travel plans evaporated in March 2020 because of the worldwide Covid19 pandemic. So in May we made a decision “Pro Brandenburg”. We deperately needed to get out of our home offices and had always had the idea in the back of our minds to take a boat trip on the Havel or Müritz river. Now this was the ideal opportunity. Unfortunately, many people seemed to have a similar idea. So it took a few days until Chris finally found what we were looking for: the yacht charter “Marina Alter Hafen” in Mildenberg near Zehdenick. We could hardly believe that we were able to charter a Pedro Skiron 35 ship of almost 11 meters length and 9 tons (!) weight there – and we were even allowed to sail it! To be on the safe side, we went to the Ziegeleipark Mildenberg on a dreary weekend early May to have a look at the marina and ships. And we were more than positively surprised. On site we met a couple who had already chartered there several times and they too were completely enthusiastic about the ships and the services of that rental company. So we signed the necessary contracts and stared to look forward to our travel week end of June. The charter certificate in our pocket The charter agreement includes a three-hour introductory course in which you are familiarized with the basics of inland navigation and awarded with a “charter certificate”, with which you are then allowed to drive the boat for the rental period. The introduction itself was entertaining, a large part of the 3-hour course was dedicated to stories from the eventful past of the instructor, who has travelled and surfed all over the world and who was not short of anecdotes to tell. On to the practical part! Now it was time to steer a 9-ton ship. This also worked reasonably well, even the “reverse parking manoeuvre”, i.e. mooring, was successful at first try. So we spent the first evening in the old marina and had a delicious dinner in the restaurant there, before we lay down to rest in our new “motorhome on the water”.… weiterlesen