Naxos Catamaran

The twin-hulled silhouette of a Naxos catamaran first appeared in the harbour of Naxos Town in the early 2000s, when a handful of sailors recognised that the shallow-draft stability of the catamaran hull could access anchorages in the Small Cyclades that monohulls could not reach safely.

By 2010, three operators had secured licences to run scheduled sailings to Koufonisia, Rina Cave, and the turquoise shallows off Schoinousa, and by 2026 the route has become the signature day-cruise of the island, carrying approximately twelve thousand passengers each season.

Naxos Catamaran sails under a Greek flag, its twin catamarans purpose-built in France and registered in Piraeus. The fleet comprises two vessels: a fourteen-metre Lagoon 450 and a sixteen-metre Fountaine Pajot Saba 50, each carrying a maximum of eighteen guests. Morning departures leave Naxos Marina at 08:30, and the southeastward course to Koufonisia takes ninety minutes under sail and engine. The route threads between the islets of Donoussa and Keros, passing the uninhabited cliffs of Daskalio, where archaeologists discovered a Bronze Age sanctuary in 2015. The first swim stop anchors in the cobalt bay below Pano Koufonisia village, where the seabed lies four metres below the keel and the water temperature in September holds at twenty-three degrees Celsius.

Rina Cave, the second anchorage, is a sea-carved limestone grotto accessible only by zodiac or swim. The cave mouth measures six metres wide, and the interior chamber rises to a natural dome eleven metres high, with sunlight refracting through the entrance in a column of pale blue. Lunch is served at anchor: Greek salad, grilled octopus, baked feta, and local wine from Naxos vineyards. The return sail reaches Naxos Marina by 17:00, the twin hulls cutting a wake through water that Aegean sailors have navigated for four millennia. This is not recreational boating. It is passage-making in the oldest sense, where wind, current, and the geometry of the hull dictate every tack and bearing.