Sailing Along the Athens Riviera – A Quiet Mediterranean Passage

There are places in the Cyclades where the sea seems to become part of everything around you. Antiparos, Greece, is one of them. On a clear summer day, anchored sailboats rest on intensely blue water while the low, dry landscape of the Cyclades stretches along the horizon. There is very little movement. The boats turn gently with the breeze. The sunlight reflects from the Aegean. And for a while...

There is a special kind of silence that arrives when a sailing day is over. The sails are down, the boats rest quietly on the water, and the movement of the Aegean becomes almost imperceptible. Then the sun begins to fall. In Folegandros, Greece, the evening light spreads across the sea while the masts of sailing boats become dark lines against a golden sky. After hours of travelling through the...

There is a different feeling when a long summer journey finally comes to an end. After weeks spent between islands, harbors, open water and quiet evenings by the sea, the familiar coastline of Athens begins to appear again. The sailing boat returns to the city, the sun falls behind the masts, and another season in the Ionian Islands of Greece becomes a collection of memories. Behind us are miles...

There is something different about the journey back from the Greek islands. The destination may now be behind you, but the sea remains ahead. Harbors slowly disappear from view, islands become distant shapes on the horizon, and the Aegean begins to feel larger with every mile. After days spent moving between islands, beaches and small ports, the return journey offers a quiet moment to remember...

There are journeys through the Greek islands where the destination dominates the experience. And there are others where the sea becomes just as important as the island waiting ahead. Sailing towards Andros, Greece, belongs to the second kind. The boat moves across the blue waters of the Aegean, distant vessels appear along the horizon, and somewhere ahead lies the northernmost island of the...

Along the waterfront of Piraeus, where sailing boats and yachts now rest quietly on the waters of Marina Zeas, the sea carries a history far older than the modern city surrounding it. Today, Marina Zeas is part of the maritime landscape of the Athens Riviera, a place where boats arrive after journeys through Greece and prepare for new passages toward the islands. But more than two thousand years...

There is a particular moment in every journey through the Greek islands when one landscape begins to disappear and another is still somewhere beyond the horizon. Leaving the Cyclades behind and heading toward Astypalaia is one of those moments. The familiar shapes of the Cycladic islands slowly recede as the boat continues eastward across the Aegean Sea. Ahead lies Astypalaia, an island...

After days among the islands of western Greece, the sailing journey turns north toward Corfu. Behind us lie the waters of the Ionian Sea and a chain of islands that make this part of Greece one of its most distinctive maritime landscapes. Ahead, Corfu slowly becomes the final point of the passage — not simply another destination, but the place where this particular journey through the Ionian...

The distance between Mykonos and Delos may be short, but the journey connects two very different worlds. Leaving Mykonos behind and sailing across the blue waters of the Cyclades, the low landscape of Delos gradually appears ahead. Today the passage is a beautiful journey through the Aegean Sea. In antiquity, however, these waters led toward one of the most sacred places in the Greek world...

Paros is an island that reveals a different character when seen from the sea. Away from the villages and beaches, its coastline stretches across the horizon while the deep blue waters of the Aegean become the dominant part of the landscape. Sailing around Paros, Greece, places you directly in the heart of the Cyclades, surrounded by islands that have been connected by the sea for thousands of...