Fair price for a charter boat (Rottnest Swim)

KaneKane Member
edited March 2013 in General Discussion
I have started to look into chartering a support boat for the 2014 Rottnest Island Swim. Anybody have any tips on:
1. how much the charter and captain should cost
2. how far in advance i should book
3. where to find a support kayaker in Perth
4. recommended charters / captains
5. anything else - other tips

From the frustrations i have read I get the feeling the training is going to be the easy part of this adventure!

Cheers
Kane
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Comments

  • dc_in_sfdc_in_sf San FranciscoCharter Member
    Organizing a boat is definitely one of the challenges of the Rottnest swim, especially if you don't live in Perth. I didn't have any luck with locating a charter company that had an appropriate boat or an appropriate price, but was lucky enough to get a boat through a friend of a friend of a friend. Hitting up everyone you know with a Perth connection is not surprisingly probably the best approach.

    One of the problems with organizing a boat is that everyone (teams and solos) needs a boat at the time of entry, but not every team gets accepted (there is a lottery to limit numbers). This means a large number of boats are unavailable at the time of entry, but become available after entry has passed.

    One idea would be to put down a boat/skipper combo on the entry that you have no intention of using, and then aggressively looking for a boat after the team lottery has been resolved. The skippers name needs to be determined by early January in order for it to be printed in the handbook, but not sure anyone really cares about that, so you have a fair window to find a boat.

    The event is a pretty big deal in Perth, so people want to be involved. If you looked at the event forums and facebook page there were a reasonable number of posts with offers of boats and kayaking, so putting up a request there or the classifieds website (gumtree?) may well turn something up.

    Good luck!

    http://notdrowningswimming.com - open water adventures of a very ordinary swimmer

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