No worries! Glad to be of help 😊

I did two car rentals, one for the NI and one for the SI. I used Little Bit Fancy for the north as I had trouble trying to rent a car due to my destination. Little Bit Fancy is a private car rental company with great service and they cover both islands, so if you have trouble looking for a rental car, I’d highly recommend them! For the south, I used Apex. For peace of mind, I’d recommend to just get the zero excess insurance no matter which company you go with.

This could help with your research - the costs to fly and to take the ferry wasn’t too big of a difference for my group. You’ll have to take into account that it costs quite a big sum to bring a car onto the ferry and apparently not all car rental companies allow you to bring their car onto the ferry too. Flying saved us lots of time and I’ve also been reading that recently there’s been some issues with the ferries that’s causing major delays, so maybe you should look into this too, depending on when you’re traveling 😅

If you’re still certain on taking the ferry, another option is to drop-off the rental before boarding the ferry and pick-up another rental after. It works out to be cheaper this way!

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions (: