The two famous Greek islands in the Aegean sea and worldwide are Myconos & Santorini.
We thing useful to pass on more information and details to those sailors and holiday-ers who would wish to sail the two Greek islands in the Cyclades area or sail just to Santorini island within just one week charter.
We, at Easy Sailing, try to accommodate all our clients wishes, while at the same time it is necessary we reveal the essential information for a realistic planning of each sailing trip. Booking a fully crewed yacht charter makes it often possible to pay a visit to Mykonos or Santorini or if the weather is good to both the islands. This is also possible for any charter duration of 2 weeks or more. But, booking a bareboat charter for just 1 week, with or without skipper/crew, may not have the same result.
Most bareboat fleet operators have a tight schedule of strictly weekly charters, usually Saturday to Saturday back-to-back in the main season, and people mostly plan just one week sailing holidays. The big majority of the charter yachts for charter in Greece are based in Athens area (Alimos or Lavrion), thus it all comes to a 1-week charter starting and ending in Athens.
Mykonos is East of Athens at 90 Nautical miles and Santorini is Southeast of Athens at 130 Nautical miles where the distance between Mykonos and Santorini is approximately 75 miles.
Given that a sailing yacht makes 5-8 knots (~miles) per hour, lots of hours of sailing/motoring have to be previewed for a sailing trip Athens-Mykonos-Santorini-Athens just to cover the distance.
The distance Athens-Mykonos-Santorini-Athensis more than 260 NMiles and it averages 42 hours of NON-STOP sailing. This with no time spent on relaxing, eating, swimming, snorkeling, hoping, exploring, shopping, resting or sleeping. So for a one-week charter, and starting out of Athens or Lavrion charter base, it would be wise to plan to see only Mykonos island.
The distance Athens-Santorini island-Athens could also be done within one week, but will include too long passages every day and will surely create fatigue (including a long non stop sailing upwind for 130 miles … or 22+ hours of non-stop sailing to sail back to Athens. No fun, no comfort and the success of such a plan relies also on favorable weather conditions, and the usual windy conditions in the Cyclades islands are not to be disregarded.
In other words it is not recommended to sail for just one week from Athens or Lavrion to Santorini, but from Athens just to Mykonos island at farthest (here is a suggested itinerary).
For experienced sailors, winds can be a routine or a challenge of pleasure but for occasional sailors no. Sailing downwind is considered easier (not always true), while sailing long distances upwind is slower, more difficult and more uncomfortable.
And what is the solution for those who wish to sail to Mykonos and Santorini within one-week charter? The solution is to book well in advance with a few charter operators that have a handful of boats available from/to Mykonos island. And never forget Mykonos can give rough seas.
Another possibility would be to start a bareboat sailing week from the island of Paros which is located in the middle of the Cyclades islands. Paros has no international flights so getting there will add a ferry or a domestic flight from/to Athens. Here is a suggested itinerary for one-week sailing charter starting from Paros and visiting Mykonos and Santorini.
No sailing charters are offered directly from/to Santorini island? Santorini is all volcanic with deep waters and there is no big marina on the island. A “fishing shelter” is situated on the south coast of the island, but it is small and over-occupied by local day-trip and fishing boats. These local day-trip catamarans are not doing weekly sailing charters in general.
Bottom line is that Easy Sailing can offer you but does not recommend chartering yachts out of Mykonos island. We know it is a pity, moreover because there are lately quite many flights directly to Mykonos from many European cities.
Booking for two weeks sailing vacation
If you would consider/afford sailing holidays for 2 weeks then there is absolutely no problem – just prepare your crew for the possibility of a bit “rough” seas for a while and set sails !
Here is a suggested itinerary for 2 weeks bareboat sailing from/to Athens.
We feel your holiday time is valuable it is our philosophy to place here in our website a piece of essential and fair information for our clients.
