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What amazing memories we three best friends had over the weekend. I have been on the Hawkesbury River prior with Holidays Afloat and always had a great time but this time I was with my friends who had never experienced house boating on the Hawkesbury......It was such a wonderful experience to do for Julie's 50th birthday celebrations. Holidays Afloat are such a professional team, I was requesting several things prior to our arrival and nothing was a problem for both Nicole and Karen. We took out the Islander 35' 4 berth which was perfect for us as it slept 2 x double beds. It has recently had a refurb so everything was new, fresh and workable. The full size oven was fantastic as I had the cook top, grill and oven all going at the same time for our seafood Platter. With Luxury Afloat you can sit and relax, kayak (and fall in) bush walk, fish, bbq and party and most of all create some wonderful ever lasting memories.... It truly is My Happy Place - Thank You Guys…
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Date of experience: November 2021
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Wow, where to begin. The people we dealt with were wonderful and fully understanding, as at one point we thought that we might not make it from NZ due to covid bubble restrictions. Once at the marina, the staff were very professional and we were on the boat and gone within 30 minutes. The boat was clean and had everything that we needed. All the electronics worked and we had a couple of great BBQs at the back of the boat. It was a most memorable holiday and we both can't wait to do it again. If you do get a chance make your way to Smith's Creek. Heaven.…
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Date of experience: May 2021
1 Helpful vote
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Spacious boat easy to drive and moor staff very friendly & helpful price value to money. Safe and secure parking.
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Date of experience: March 2021
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We had a great few days out on the boat! We had a 45 foot, with myself and my partner (now fiance!), and we were able to grab my parents in the motorised dingy to come on for one of the nights. Highly recommend getting the motorised dingy (costs bit extra) if you plan on doing any trips to shore, we also used it to just go explore a little during the trip! They recommended our parents went to McKell Park, as there is a spot for you to moor there, and we used the dingy from there to collect them. The team were amazing to deal with before we left, and on the day to get things organised. Organise ice when you get there to take straight on, lots easier. Lots of room in the fridge for your cold items, and two eskies outside, bbq was really great and easy to use. We also brought a bunch of card games to occupy some time in the rain, but was so lovely to just sit and watch it all around you! Overall amazing trip, we'll be doing it every year :)…
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Date of experience: December 2020
Helpful
THE GOOD: A week on a houseboat is definitely "something different", and I mean that in a 100% good way. Unlike our highly regulated roads with lines and signs, the spirit of freedom and exploration is all part of the houseboat experience, and the staff at Holidays Afloat all help make that happen, including getting you comfortable with the basics of handling a houseboat and what you can & can't do with it and where you can and can't take it, all with your own safety top of mind. Holidays Afloat have a range of vessels available. We inadvertently chose one of the oldest vessels in their fleet, the "Islander 35' 4-berth", and although the kitchen and bathroom were comparatively renovated and functional, the houseboat overall is very tired and surely not long for this world; I'd not want to be in a boat like this in the colder half of the year, either. THE NOT-SO-GOOD: Our biggest problem was powering/recharging our gadgets. If you're planning to "work remotely" on a houseboat, you really need to plan the details carefully. At the helm (and only at the helm) there's 2 USB sockets (which admin *did* tell us about), and 2 x '12V cigarette lighter' sockets (a fact that the admin refused to confirm for us even when I inquired), and a single 240VAC socket on the inverter - THAT'S IT; nothing at the kitchen table, nothing upstairs on the sun deck. Also, the built-in audio system is only useful for inside the cabin; but one can argue as to whether it's a good idea to be playing music outside, when you're in a quiet cove of the Hawkesbury river system, I could imagine your boating neighbours appreciating your lack of sound amplification on the top deck. Thankfully we bought a little Bluetooth speaker... Of far more consequence is the 150Watt 240Vac inverter which was *incapable* of supplying more than about half that power (so you can't recharge a MacBook Pro or any other "large" laptop with it *mic-drop*). Quite by chance we brought another lower-powered 240Vac-to-USB-C adapter which allowed us to recharge MacBooks at a slower rate, thus not tripping out the inverter - so we got lucky. As an electronics engineer, I looked into this and discovered that it's because there's too much voltage drop along the cable between the battery and the inverter when under load, so the inverter trips off once power draw goes above about 70-80 Watts. Also, the Voltmeter on the 12V battery bank at the helm also seems "off", even after hours of motoring when the batteries should be recharged and showing 13.x VDC with the motor running, I never once saw it showing more than low-12.x VDC, so it's basically impossible to know what the battery state-of-charge is and manage that resource. How sh*t like this doesn't get fixed in the years/decades(?) this inverter facility was added to the boat, I'll never understand, but in this 3rd decade of the 21st century, that's just not good enough. I hasten to add that there's not many of this "Islander 35' 4-berth" in their fleet, the vast majority appear to be larger and newer (with higher prices, of course), and some with solar panels (so recharging the batteries doesn't only happen when motoring), so *most* customers will hopefully have a better experience than us when it comes to powering their gadgets. THE BAD: None!…
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Date of experience: December 2020
2 Helpful votes
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