SeaScape Sailing - Greek ferry timetables, airline schedules, other useful local resources

Domestic flights

Olympic Airways - the main domestic carrier in Greece

Aegean Airlines - well worth checking out for flights to Kos and Rhodes.

Greek ferries. The ferry lines which offer services to the Dodecanese islands and Samos are:

GA Ferries
Blue Star ferries
NEL lines - a fast service to Kos and Samos

In the summer months, there is always a GA ferry to Leros which leaves Athens between 2pm-4pm daily; it is approx 9 hours to Patmos, 10 hours to Leros, 12 hours to Kos. From Leros to Athens, there is a ferry which leaves around 9-11pm every day in the summer.

Blue Star is a large ferry company who added the Dodecanese to their other extensive services last year. Their boats are fast, very comfortable, even have a swimming pool on deck! From Athens to/from Leros is only 8 hours. Unfortunately, they only have 3 boats a week Athens-Leros at the moment. However, their ferry on Sat night Athens-Leros coincides very nicely with our rendezvous time on Sunday am.

Useful times:
Athens-Leros:dep Pireus Sat 11.30pm, arrive Leros 8.10am Sun. Blue Star ferries
Leros-Athens:Dep Leros Sun 9.45pm, arrive Pireus 7.10am. Blue Star ferries
Athens-Samos: Every day from Pireus at 5pm, arrive Samos 11.45pm. NEL ferry lines
Samos-Athens: Every day from Samos at 7.30am, arrive Athens 2.45pm. NEL ferry lines
Kos-Athens: There are many ferries between Kos and Athens; check out our timetable links for full details.

Online booking is available for Blue Star and NEL ferries; for GA it is coming "real soon now". !

Booking a cabin is not expensive, and highly recommended.

A very good question for many experienced sailors!

We've been there and thought that too; in our own experiences of chartering boats to explore new corners of the world. All fun and exciting until -

3am and "Oh you didn't realise the wind always swings onshore here in the night ??"
5am and the fishing boat on the inside of you decides to take off (casting your lines to the wind - yes, it's happened!)
You thought this "Mediterranean mooring" was all a fuss-about-nothing... until there's a 25knot crosswind, you've just picked up two other boats' anchors and whatever their owners are yelling at you in half a dozen different languages isn't actually too hard to understand...:)

And so it goes on. For us, we've learnt our lesson; if we only have a short time, we take someone along with local knowledge. It's Murphy's Law insurance; at least if He still gets you, it's someone else's lost sleep ! :)

There is an extensive network of smaller ferries and hydrofoils which connect the Dodecanese island chain. Not all of these are detailed online, but most are shown on the GTP site.

Some of the Greek ferries don't get their scheduling acts together until as late as March! But as a general guide, you can rely on there being regular hydrofoils running between Samos-Patmos-Lipsos-Leros-Kalymnos-Kos-Rhodes every day.

There is also a fast catamaran which has a daily service between Rhodes-Kos-Kalymnos-Leros-Lipsos-Patmos every day.

If you need more details in order to work out exactly how to get to/from us, but official schedules aren't available yet - email us, we know what the usual timetables are at least!