How the facts are checked
Every specific claim here carries where it came from and the date it was checked. When something has not been measured, it says so instead of guessing.
Every fact on this site, with its date →
Three labels, used consistently
Anything specific on this site appears as a dated fact rather than loose prose. A crossing time, an hour, a price, a rule: each one is a dated fact rather than loose prose. It looks like this:
Pick-up and drop-off are part of the all-inclusive figure, alongside skipper, fuel, taxes and usually water — but only from the list of free pick-up points that most operators give out.
Taken from Being picked up at your hotel dock on Lake Como →
Division, not a listing — none of the operators checked publishes a per-head price for a private boat. Rounded to the euro, a €250 hour splits into €125 at two, €83 at three, €63 at four, €50 at five and €42 at six; the same division puts two hours (€470) at €78 a head and four hours (€900) at €150 with six aboard.
Taken from Private boat or shared tour on Lake Como →
How long a stop takes here — a swim, or a table ashore — has not been timed from the boat, so no figure for either is published on this page, and no ranking of the middle rungs is offered on top of it. Name the stops you want in the same message that gives the date and the dock, and let the hours be quoted around them.
Taken from How long you need on a Lake Como boat →
- VVerified
- Either observed first-hand, or read from a source named next to it, with the date it was checked
- SAn estimate
- Reasoned, and honest about being reasoning rather than measurement
- ?Not measured
- Said so, rather than filled in with something plausible
Where the facts come from
Two places, and they answer different things. Being on the water gives the times, the wind, the light, where you can stop. A map cannot tell you those. Two years of messages from people planning a day here give something else: what visitors are worried about, which is rarely what guides write about.
Where a fact is seasonal, the date matters more than usual: conditions in August are not conditions in October, and the label says which one was measured.
What is checked before anything is published
These are not intentions. They are checks that run before the site is built, and the build fails if one of them does:
- A page cannot be published without at least one first-hand verified fact. Without it, the page is something anyone could write, and there is no reason for it to exist
- An unfilled placeholder cannot reach the site
- Every page must state which question it answers, or it does not get written
- Nothing is ever published automatically. A person reads the change and decides
- Every commercial link is marked as commercial, next to the link and not only in a footer
What the tools do, and refuse to do
The calculators on this site show ranges, not single numbers. A single number would be a guess wearing a suit. Where a value has not been measured yet, the tool shows nothing rather than an estimate dressed as data. The route planner will tell you a crossing has not been timed rather than compute one from a map.
Disclosure
Some links to booking platforms earn a commission if you book through them. It never changes what is recommended, and it is marked next to the link.
If something here is wrong
Conditions change, marinas change their rules, villas change their days. If something on this page or any other is out of date or simply wrong, tell me. A correction with a date on it is worth more than a page that was right last year. Corrections are made in public: the date on the fact changes with it.
Common questions
How do you know the times and conditions on this site are right?
Every specific claim carries where it came from and the date it was checked. Facts observed first-hand are marked V, reasoned estimates S, and anything not measured is marked with a question mark rather than filled in.
What happens when something has not been measured?
It says so. A page cannot be published here without at least one first-hand verified fact, and unfilled placeholders cannot reach the site — both are checked automatically before anything goes live.
Do you earn money from the recommendations?
Some links to booking platforms earn a commission, marked as such next to the link itself rather than only in a footer.