Greek ferries: who runs them and where they leave from

The companies, side by side

Every name below is an operator, meaning it owns boats and crews them. The differences that decide your day are in the last three columns.

Blue Star is the one most people should default to. The ships are large, they carry vehicles without ceremony, the deck fare is the cheapest way to cross the Aegean, and there is a real outdoor deck to stand on. The cost is time: figure on roughly double what a catamaran takes on the same water. On a night sailing to Crete or Rhodes that is an advantage rather than a penalty, because you sleep through it and arrive at breakfast.

SeaJets sells the opposite trade. The high-speed craft cut the crossing close to half, which on a week's holiday is a genuine day recovered. In exchange you pay a good deal more, you sit in an aircraft-style cabin with the windows salted over, and on many of the boats there is nowhere outside to go. They also ride hard in a swell, and they are the first sailings pulled when the wind gets up. Anyone prone to seasickness feels the difference within twenty minutes.

The rest sit between the two. Golden Star and Hellenic Seaways run both kinds of boat, so the company name tells you nothing until you check which vessel is on your sailing. Fast Ferries, despite the name, runs conventional ships out of Rafina. Minoan, ANEK and Superfast are the overnight operators to Crete, with cabins worth booking rather than a reclining seat.

A conventional ship

Ferryhopper is not a ferry company

It gets searched more than any operator, which suggests a lot of people think they are booking a boat called Ferryhopper. They are not. It is an aggregator: it pulls the timetables of the Greek operators into one search and sells you their tickets, the way a flight comparison site sells seats on planes it does not own. Direct Ferries and a handful of others do the same job.

That is worth something on this market specifically. Four companies might serve your route, none of their websites acknowledges the other three, and only a combined timetable shows you that the sailing you want leaves from a different port. Aggregators also handle the Greek payment pages and the paper-ticket rules better than some operator sites manage in English.

What an aggregator cannot do is influence the boat. Cancellations, refunds, rebooking and the rules about vehicles all belong to the operator, and going through a middleman sometimes adds a day to getting your money back. Booking direct with the operator is usually marginally cheaper and marginally faster when something goes wrong. Comparing on an aggregator and then deciding where to buy is the sensible order.

Which port you leave Athens from

Athens has three ferry ports and they are nowhere near each other. Booking the right boat from the wrong port is the single most common mistake on this route, and it is not recoverable on the morning of departure.

Piraeus is the big one, at the end of the metro line, and it is not a quay but a ring road around a harbour with numbered gates from E1 to E12. Crete goes from one end, the Cyclades from another, the Saronic islands from a third, and walking between the far gates takes longer than you think with a suitcase. Your ticket carries the gate number. A free shuttle bus circles the port, and the metro station sits by gate E7, which is not where most island boats leave from.

Rafina is a small port on the east coast, about half an hour from the airport and an hour from central Athens by bus. It is closer to the northern Cyclades than Piraeus is, so the crossing to Andros, Tinos and Mykonos is shorter from here. Andros has no service from Piraeus at all. If you land in the afternoon and want an island the same evening, Rafina is usually the answer.

Lavrio is further down the same coast, quiet, and mostly there for Kea. It also handles some Kythnos sailings and a few long runs to the northern Aegean. Nothing about it is convenient unless Kea is where you are going.

Two groups never appear in that list under Athens. The Ionian islands sit on the other side of the country and are reached from Igoumenitsa, Patras or Kyllini, which is why a Corfu trip is planned around a different airport entirely. The Sporades leave from Volos and Agios Konstantinos, three to four hours north of Athens by road, so picking a base on Skiathos is a decision about that drive rather than about Piraeus. If you want to see how far apart these places actually are, the maps put every island at its real coordinates.

Fast boat or big ship

Crossing times move with the season, the vessel and the number of stops, so treat any figure you read as an order of magnitude and check the actual sailing. As a rule of thumb, a conventional ship from Piraeus reaches the near Cyclades in something over three hours and the far ones in something over seven, while a high-speed craft on the same water takes roughly half that. Crete and the Dodecanese are overnight runs whichever boat you take. Which of the near islands you point at is a separate question, and the order you visit them in matters more than the distance.

The stops matter more than the top speed. A boat calling at four islands before yours can take longer than a slower one going direct, and the timetable is where you see it. So is the arrival time: a fast boat that lands you at eleven at night on an island with no bus service has not saved you anything.

The season, and the wind that runs it

Most island routes run from roughly April to October, thicken through July and August, and thin out sharply after the middle of September. Winter service exists on the big lines, Crete and Rhodes and the Saronic islands among them, but a smaller Cycladic island can drop to a handful of sailings a week and the high-speed boats disappear from the timetable altogether. Next summer's schedules are published in stages through the late winter and early spring, so a trip planned very early only ever sees part of the picture.

Then there is the meltemi. It is a dry north wind that blows down the Aegean in summer, strongest in July and August, and it can hold for days. Big ships sail through most of it. Catamarans do not, and when the port authority decides the sea is too rough, the fast sailings go first while the conventional ones keep running. That decision arrives the evening before or the morning of departure, never a week ahead, so no booking site can warn you.

The way to absorb that is structural, not clever. Leave a full day between your last ferry and your flight home. Sleep in Athens the night before you fly rather than on the island. And if the forecast is already ugly when you book, the slower boat is the one that gets you there.

Taking a car on board

Conventional ferries take vehicles, most high-speed craft do not, and vehicle space sells out long before deck seats in August. You load through the stern ramp, an officer waves you into a slot, and the vehicle deck is sealed for the crossing, so anything you want during the trip comes up with you. Arrive earlier than the foot passengers are told to.

The part that catches people out is the hire car. Greek rental contracts routinely confine the vehicle to the island it was collected on, and putting it on a ferry without written permission voids the insurance and can be treated as theft of the vehicle. Some companies allow it for a fee and a signed authorisation, many refuse. Ask before you book anything, and get the answer in writing rather than over the counter.

In practice, hopping between islands with one car is rarely worth it anyway. The vehicle fare on a Cycladic crossing costs more than the passenger, you pay for it again on the way back, and you spend the crossing worrying about a car you cannot reach. Dropping the car before the boat and picking up another at the other end is usually cheaper and always simpler.

Tickets, boarding and what deck class means

Most operators now issue an e-ticket you can board with, but a few still want the booking exchanged for a paper ticket at a port office or an agency before you get on. The confirmation says which, and it is the line worth reading twice, because the office queue at Piraeus in August is not a five minute affair.

Deck class on a conventional ship gets you aboard with the run of the public areas and no reserved seat, which is fine for a few hours in good weather and grim on a full August sailing. Numbered seats cost a little more and are worth it on anything over three hours. On the overnight runs to Crete, take a cabin. High-speed craft sell numbered seats only, so the question does not arise, and the seat you get is the seat you paid for.

Luggage travels with you or on racks by the door, unweighed and unlabelled, which is one of the few things easier than flying. Boarding closes well before departure and the ships do leave on time in high season, whatever their reputation suggests. Being at the gate half an hour early costs nothing; being ten minutes late costs the ticket.

Route by route

The general rules stop being useful once you have a specific crossing in mind. Each of these covers one route: who sails it, how long each boat takes, which port you arrive at and what happens when it is cancelled.

• Athens to Crete Ferry: The Overnight CrossingThe night boat from Piraeus to Heraklion or Chania, why you book a cabin rather than a seat, and how to avoid landing 2 h 20 from your hotel.
• Athens to Milos Ferry: Times, Boats and the LineHow long Piraeus to Milos takes on the slow and fast boats, why Milos sits on the western line, and which islands it really connects to.
• Athens to Mykonos Ferry: Piraeus or Rafina?Most fast ferries to Mykonos leave from Rafina, not Piraeus. Compare the two Athens ports, crossing times, operators and what the meltemi does in summer.
• Athens to Naxos Ferry: Times, Boats and the PortAround 5 hours on a Blue Star from Piraeus, 3 h 30 on a fast boat, and a port that lands you at the foot of the Chora. What to book, and why.
• Athens to Paros Ferry: Times, Boats, ConnectionsPiraeus to Paros in about four hours on the slow boat or three on the fast one, why the price gap rarely pays, and where you sail on to next.
• Athens to Santorini Ferry: Which Boat, and WhenThe slow Blue Star crossing, the fast SeaJets one and the flight, compared honestly, plus what Athinios port is really like when you land.
• Crete to Santorini Ferry: How Long and How FragileFast ferries link Heraklion to Santorini in about two hours, in season only. How long it really takes, why it cancels, and what to do when it does.
• Mykonos to Santorini Ferry: Times, Ports, Plan BOnly fast ferries run Mykonos to Santorini, two to three hours. What the meltemi does to the schedule, which ports you use, and what to do if it cancels.