Re: Will the price of gas make you spend less time on the water?
We can run for about 6 hours on 12 liters, so like Steve this is cheap entertainment a Euro prices.
We just cut back on other stuff like movies, or eating out.
I also pulled out of “AmCham” (American Chamber of Commerce) & the “American German Business Club” (all they do is talk about playing golf). They both keep raising their prices to compensate for declining memberships, and from a business point of view, it is just not worth staying active. This savings alone will pay for our boat cost for the entire year.
I also agree with Steve about less traffic on the river where we boat.
There used to be a dozen or so Wakeboarders on the river everyday when we would go out, now it is just one or two, if that.
Also less cruisers, if any are out, they are anchored. PWC traffic is down by about ninety percent. Even the rental boats are just sitting idle in the water.
The hotel ships & barges are still there, but they also seem to be reducing their runs.
I don't know if the companies have switched to rails/trains for commercial transport, but there are less of them. There are not many tourist visiting Germany, so the Hotel ships have cut back on their runs also.
That leaves us, the rowing skulls, and a couple of sailboats on a nice weekend.
We got our storage place direct on the river this year because so many people had pulled their boats out, and half were empty. There was a twenty year waiting list for such a spot in 2000, now they are all empty. We seem to be the only ones using it out of the few boats still there. In two weeks of great weather, only one other boat has gone out.
For us it is great, we have the whole facilities to ourselfs, picnic tables, grills, launch, & dock are now like our fenced in private resort property, and all this in the middle of a major European city within a mile of our house.
Sometimes I feel kind of bad sitting there with the rest of town staring at us through the fence, but hey ...
... they don't care about our tough times, why should I care about theirs.
We also got it for half the price what it was the end of last year when I checked and they gave us the first 6 months free. They also offered us a 24 meter slip, which is generally charged by the meter of the slip, but only wanted the meter money based on the length of our boat, i.e. 3 meter. We went for the lock-up storage though because thefts of boats has sky rocketed since the economy crashed here in 2000.
Last year the “yacht clubers” would not talk to us, now we have been asked to come to two “yacht club” (we are not members of any club) events this week alone. I will repeat, we have a self-built nine and half foot outboard boat with a 6HP motor. Rather funny how people are reacting to us now as compared to a few years ago.
On the downside, business couldn't be worse, Germany takes one blow after another, year after year, and the cost of gas is just the next one in a long line.
The other bad development is that Germans tend to be a very jealous people as a whole, and as the smallest boat on the river we were always seen as cute and they were friendly to us. Now with the bigger boats gone, some have taken to screaming the obscenities at us, that were reserved for the larger boats, from the shore when we go by.
They are very bitter in their comments about us having a boat. Last week one threw a beer bottle from the river promenade at us, he was drunk so his aim was bad but ...
On a positive note those on the water are very friendly now, with many of the arrogant "bankers", “jet set”, & “Internet boom” millionaires now gone, leaving just a handful of friendly old-timers and us.
