About us
We watch the water on Europe's cruise rivers and write down what it is doing, every day, so that somebody with a cruise booked can see it for themselves.
What this site is for
You have a river cruise booked and you have read that the river is low, or high, and you cannot tell whether that means anything for your sailing. The cruise line will tell you in its own time. The news will tell you about the worst stretch of the worst river. Neither answers the question you actually have, which is about your ship, your ports and your dates.
So this site puts the measurements where you can read them. Pick your sailing and you get the water your ship has to cross, in the order you reach it, under the name of the city you booked — today's reading, how far it sits from the level we work out a cruise ship needs there, which way it has moved in the last three days, and a link to the waterway authority's own forecast where one is published.
Nothing on this site costs money today. The Daily River Log Watch — the morning email for your sailing — is free. There is no account, there is nothing to install, and we are not paid by anybody named on these pages.
We are independent of every cruise line
Waterlogged River Cruise Watch is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or operated by any cruise line, insurer, water authority or data portal named on the site. Names and trademarks identify the relevant sailing, operator or source and remain the property of their owners. No insurance product, quote, referral or affiliate link is offered in this release.
Nobody on this site has paid to be here and nobody can pay to have a reading changed. If a number here is inconvenient for a cruise line, it stays. The whole of the working is on how we work it out, so you do not have to take our word for the result — you can check the arithmetic.
What we will and will not tell you
- Measured readings, from the authorities who measure them. Every water level on this site is a reading published by a national waterway authority, credited on the page it appears on. We do not estimate a river level and we do not fill a gap with a guess: a gauge we cannot read says so.
- Official forecasts, shown under licence or linked. Where an authority has given us permission in writing, its forecast appears under that authority's own name and its own issue time, unchanged. Where it has not, we link you to the authority's page instead of copying it. We never re-date or re-score somebody else's forecast.
- No forecast of our own. We do not publish a prediction of what a river will do, and we do not publish a probability that your cruise will be cancelled. Both would be us guessing about your holiday, and we would rather be useful than impressive. What we do publish is arithmetic you can follow: this is the reading, this is the level we work out a ship needs, this is the gap between them.
- A gauge level is not a depth. It is the height of the water at one measuring station against that station's own zero point. It is not the depth under your ship's hull, and nobody should read it as one.
Where every reading comes from, and what we are allowed to do with it, is set out in full on sources & method. What these numbers can and cannot be used for is on limits & data sources. Whether each feed answered this morning is on data status.
When we are wrong
Sources publish corrections, gauges are moved, and we make mistakes of our own. We would rather hear about one than leave it standing, so if a number here does not match what you are reading elsewhere, tell us which page and what you expected. Most of what reaches us turns out to be a correction worth making.
How to reach us
If you are reading this on paper, the address is info@rivercruisewatch.com. You can also send us a note from the contact page without opening your email program. Either way, the contact page says what happens to what you send and how long an answer takes.
Waterlogged River Cruise Watch Ltd., PO Box 100, Kelowna, BC V1P 1S5, Canada, publishes Waterlogged River Cruise Watch.