Northernaire Houseboats of Rainy Lake

No better place to spend a few days on the lake without life's distractions! Always come back here for our houseboat vacations!

We had a lovely time. The only bad part was 2 of the islands we stayed at mice crawled on board our boat. EEK! Thank goodness the owners had mouse traps on the boats. We spoke with another party there who had no problem. All in all it was a great experience and would do it again!

We just returned from a week long trip to rainy lake. We rented a houseboat from Northernaire houseboats. If possible I would give a zero star review. The workers were helpful, but the owner was a complete and total jerk. The boat that we rented had a big hole in the floor of the middle bedroom, that flooded that bedroom and the hallway, so we had to deal with soaked carpets for almost half of the trip. The weather stripping under the bow door was broken and half gone, so the carpet in the front room got soaked as well. Then we had many, many, motor problems. The motors were wired wrong, so the solar charging system didn't work. We tired twice to start the motors, and both times the batteries were dead. Thankfully we had cell phone coverage because the shipboard radio didn't work because of the dead batteries. Then there were the problems with one of the refrigerators. It wouldn't start initially, and after the first visit from the mechanic to work on the motors he got the refrigerator working, but it died again after a few hours. After the second visit from the mechanic to work on the motors, we decided to cut our vacation short by a day rather than risk being stranded the last morning and being charged for an extra night. After all of these problems the owner refused to do anything to compensate us for our problems. In fact, after being informed by my girlfriend of how upset I was, he threatened to call the police if I came in to complain. Overall, a horrible experience dealing with Northernaire houseboats. I would never, ever, do business with them again. I will be telling everyone I know to never do business with them as well. This is in response to the reply from the owner and his lies. There were eight people on the boat, four of whom were children. We were never told not to travel. When we were traveling there were only three people sitting in the bow room. We never left lights on at night after we went to bed. In fact, while using the room on the bow at night we used a lantern that we had brought with us because the lights were to dim to see. The only power used at night was the twelve volt power point to charge a cell phone. If that's enough to drain a battery, his equipment is even worse than I had thought. This guy is a snake and a liar. Avoid this business at all costs.

Had an amazing time and experience on our family vacation and first houseboat experience! The owners were very accommodating to any needs and very quick to respond on the radio. They also offered Minnesota fishing licenses on site and guided fishing tours which ALSO ended up being a blast! First time fishing for walleyes :) Thank you soo much, from all of us!!

I would like to rebut the comments made by the owner regarding the Winkler group the week of 6/17. There are several inaccuracies in his side of the story, and a couple of down right lies. Like that we were advised not to travel-not true. When we left the water wasn't glass calm, but it wasn't rough either. Nothing that a vessel that size shouldn't have been able to handle. We did not have 12 people. We had 8 people, 4 of which were kids, 3 of those being skinny teenage boys. There were only 3 people in the bow on our way out, not 12. The big water problem was in the bathroom and sleeping area toward the REAR of the boat. We had about an inch of water on the floor, and the owner admitted that there was a repair hole that was NOT CAULKED which caused the flooding. We did not leave lights on all night, we used the propane lights the majority of the time. I did not demand a refund. I simply asked to be compensated for our lost day and the hours we lost waiting for the mechanic to fix our issues. After the owners refusal, and failure to even acknowledge any fault on his part at all, i asked if we could at least be compensated for the ice we had to buy because the fridge wasn't working-no dice. I did not threaten anything. I just let him know I was the least angry out of all of us, so they sent me, and I hoped my boyfriend didn't decide to come up there because he had some not very nice things to say. He did say he would call the police, which I thought was uncalled for. Now we know where not to go next time. Lesson learned. The dock guys and the guy that showed us the ropes were great, they can't help who they work for.