The dining cruises in Berkeley are fairly limited. There are not regularly scheduled brunch, lunch, and dinner cruises, so you can’t simply take a dining cruise on any given day. Indeed, you can’t even take a dining cruise in any given month, as the offerings all take the form of specialty cruises, which are almost always connected to holidays, and these holidays can be spread out by several weeks. Thus, a dining cruise in Berkeley can basically only be taken to celebrate a holiday, unless you charter a boat, which is possible, and then you can have a dining cruise whenever you want. It is also worth noting that Berkeley is near other places that offer dining cruises, so even if you can’t take one from Berkeley’s marina, there might still be options for you.
The relative lack of dining cruises wouldn’t be surprising in most coastal cities of a similar size. A dining cruise industry can essentially only be supported by larger cities, and thus this is where one tends to find dining cruises. However, Hornblower Cruises, a major provider of dining cruises, has ships based in Berkeley, and it is one of the nine cities for which Hornblower has set up a website exclusively dedicated to cruises in the city. (Here you can check out Hornblower Berkeley.) Despite the Hornblower’s presence, though, dining cruises are relatively rare.
But they aren’t non-existent, so what can you take? As we said, basically all of their cruises are tied to holidays. (At the moment, in fact, all of their listed dining cruises are connected to holidays, but Hornblower does offer an occasional specialty cruise that is unrelated to a holiday, and from time to time they are perhaps offered in Berkeley.) There are cruises on the horizon for Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, and just a few weeks ago they were offering Valentine’s Day cruises. Depending on the holiday, these cruises are either brunch, lunch, or dinner cruises. The Valentine’s Day cruises are for dinner, for example, whereas the Easter cruises feature brunch. So, if you want to take a dining cruise in Berkeley, you’ll have to wait for a holiday.
However, Berkeley is obviously not some sort of isolated city, and in fact it is right near Hornblower’s headquarters, which is in San Francisco. In fact, Hornblower’s Berkeley operation is essentially just an extension of the company’s Bay Area operation. Some Hornblower ships are traded between the two marinas, and you can charter boats that are part of the San Francisco fleet even if you want to sail in and out of Berkeley. This obviously doesn’t increase the number of dining cruises that are offered from Berkeley, but it does mean that there are plenty of dining cruise in the general area of Berkeley. Overwhelming, these are dining cruises offered by Hornblower in San Francisco, but there are other companies that operate in the Bay Area as well.
So, the dining cruises in Berkeley are essentially limited to holiday cruises, unless you want to charter a boat (which you can do through Hornblower, although there are other companies that offer these services). However, there are lots of dining cruises near Berkeley since Hornblower is based in San Francisco, and if you are willing to go to a port that isn’t Berkeley’s marina, there are many more options from which to choose.
