An Aegina boat trip crosses the Saronic Gulf to Aegina and the small islands around it. Stops can include Moni, Agistri and the harbour of Perdika. The trip is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville, listed with the other day trips from Athens and Saronic islands tours.
This post covers what an Aegina boat trip includes, the ports it uses and the distances across the gulf. It also covers Moni island, Agistri and the sea life.
Perdika harbour, the best months and common questions come last. The sections include Aegina boat trips and related Saronic cruises that can be booked online.
What is an Aegina boat trip?
An Aegina boat trip is a sea outing around Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. A boat is a watercraft, or water vehicle, as a rule smaller than a ship. In naval terms, a boat can be carried aboard a ship.
Aegina sits at the centre of the gulf. A ferry is a ship carrying passengers, and at times vehicles, across water.
An Aegina boat trip crosses waters linked to Saron. In myth, he followed Althepus as king of Troezen. His body washed ashore at the grove of Artemis Saronia. People buried him inside its sacred enclosure.
A festival called the Saronia honoured Artemis at that sanctuary. Saronia was also another name for Troezen. The old sea name, Saronis, lives on in Saronida, a coastal community of East Attica.
- Sea god: Aelius Aristides hints that Saron became a sea god like Glaucus.
- Underworld: Myth set six Underworld entrances along the gulf, each guarded by a bandit.
- Islets: The Diaporia group holds 5 islands and 4 smaller islets, all uninhabited.
The Megara Gulf forms the gulf’s northern end. Its bays include Phaleron Bay, Elefsina Bay, Kechries Bay and Sofiko Bay. About one third of Greece’s population lives in the capital on its shores.
Which ports does an Aegina boat trip use?
An Aegina boat trip sails from Piraeus. The port authority labels Gate E8 “Argosaronicos”, meaning the Saronic and Argolic gulfs. On Aegina, today’s town harbour stands where the ancient commercial port stood. Passenger ships also berth in Agia Marina’s bay.
An Aegina boat trip passes a town with two ancient harbours. Walls finished around 500 BC enclosed both. The northern one, a naval base, was the kryptos limen, or secret harbour.
Its ship sheds fitted up to 60 triremes, or oared warships. Today this war port lies in Avra bay. Breakwaters, walls against waves, lie south of the town and north of the hilltop acropolis.
Agia Marina’s large bay is sheltered from north winds. South of the bay, one of the next capes is Pinelopi. West of Souvala, an Aegina boat trip passes Cape Tseratsini, where copper traces suggest ancient foundries.
- Cone mounds: Cone-shaped banks between the two breakwaters shield the whole ancient seafront.
- Survey: The state office for underwater antiquities surveyed these banks in 1988.
- Silted harbour: Pausanias, a travel writer, found the harbour filled with silt in 150 AD.
The first hydrofoil reached Greece in 1962. Fixed foils, or underwater wings, lift the hull out of the water above a set speed. In the 1970s, these craft took the Greek trade name “Flying Dolphin”.
How far does an Aegina boat trip sail across the Saronic Gulf?
An Aegina boat trip crosses both short and long gaps of open sea. Agistri lies only 3.5 km southwest of Aegina’s main harbour. Spetses lies 50 miles from Piraeus, yet only 1.5 miles from Ermionida on the Greek mainland.
An Aegina boat trip to Agistri needs only a short hop. Ferries first linked Agistri with Piraeus in 1960. Until then, caiques, small traditional wooden boats, ran to and from Aegina.
The eastern gulf has a simple seabed of shallow basins and ridges. In the west, seabed sediment reaches 500 m thick in the Megara basin. The Epidaurus basin has 250 m of it.
An Aegina boat trip passes Methana, whose Agios Nikolaos spring runs at 40 to 42 °C. Nearby, the undersea Pausanias volcano has a crater 143 m down. Inside it, depths reach 300 m.
- Salamis: This island covers 93 km² and rises to 404 m at Mavrovouni.
- Ferry: The Salamis to Perama ferry carries about 8 million passengers a year.
- Elefsina Bay: Its two channels to the gulf reach only 12 m and 8 m deep.
Salamis has the densest population of any Greek island. Its short distance from Piraeus and Athens explains this. One theory builds its name from sal, meaning salt, and amis, meaning middle.
What does Moni island add to an Aegina boat trip?
An Aegina boat trip to Moni adds a long, narrow islet in the Saronic Gulf. Its width is about 0.5 nautical miles. The sea route from Aegina harbour runs about 6 km. The hilltop view reaches the Methana peninsula and Agistri.
Boats heading north up Aegina’s west coast pass through the Moni channel. The islet stays on the left. Perdika cape and its village stay on the right. An Aegina boat trip sails between them.
In 1940 the Hellenic Navy laid sea mines between Moni and Agios Georgios on Methana. The minefield made a protected front, a guarded line at sea. An Aegina boat trip crosses that water today.
The kri-kri is a feral goat named Capra hircus cretica. Feral means a tame animal gone wild. Cretans call the male agrimi, meaning the wild one. Hunting it is strictly banned.
- Kri-kri numbers: About 2,000 remain on Crete, rated vulnerable.
- Low point: Fewer than 200 survived by 1960.
- Peafowl origin: Peacocks are male Indian peafowl, native to the Indian subcontinent.
Peacocks can still fly despite their long trains of tail feathers. They fly into tall trees to roost, or rest at night. The Indian peafowl is the national bird of India.
What does Agistri add to an Aegina boat trip?
An Aegina boat trip reaches Agistri, largest of the small islands between Aegina and Epidaurus. Aleppo pine, a Mediterranean pine, fills its forests. The dry season runs from late spring to October. The island holds four villages, including Metochi.
In ancient texts, Agistri was called Kekryphaleia, meaning adorned head. A kekryphalos was a headscarf worn in ancient Greece. Art of the 5th century BC used it to mark goddesses and mortal women.
In 460 or 459 BC, Athens won a sea battle at Kekryphaleia. Thucydides recorded the fight. Maps of the 17th and 18th centuries label it Cecryphalea. An Aegina boat trip crosses the same waters.
Surface finds at Mandraki bay show people there from the early Bronze Age. Settlement lasted into the Hellenistic age, after Alexander the Great. A loop path from Limenaria passes the private beach of Aponisos.
- Municipality: Agistri became a municipality again on 1 January 2011.
- Village counts: That year’s census found 566 people in Megalochori, 448 in Skala, 128 in Limenaria.
- Dragonera path: A short loop links the beach with the chapel of Saint Barbara.
Agistri first became a municipality in 1835, with Megalochori as its seat. It dropped to a community, a smaller local unit, in 1912. The domed Life-Giving Spring church in Megalochori dates from 1885.
What sea life can an Aegina boat trip meet?
An Aegina boat trip can meet bottlenose dolphins, logged south of Agistri on 12 June 2014. Dusky groupers and brown meagre, both fish, live off Methana. Red Sea rabbitfish, arrivals through the Suez Canal, appear there too. Nutrient levels in the inner gulf fell after 2005.
The protected EU sea zone off Methana covers 3,728.08 hectares. Posidonia beds fill 186 hectares of it. Posidonia is a flowering sea plant. Its sideways stems grow only 1 to 6 cm a year.
A research sailing boat made the dolphin record. A Greek report put Greece’s bottlenose dolphins at 3,800 to 9,000 in 2015. An Aegina boat trip crosses part of their range.
The gulf of an Aegina boat trip receives waste water from the Athens area. Over 5 million people live there. Work on a main sewer to Keratsini began in 1959. Raw sewage poured into the sea there.
- First treatment: The first stage at Psyttaleia cut the pollution load by 35%.
- Sludge plant: Drying of sludge, the solid waste left after treatment, began on 1 June 2007.
- Seabirds: The Saronic islets bird zone holds 34 to 53 pairs of Mediterranean shag.
Scientists tracked nutrients on 170 research cruises from 1987 to 2010. Levels stayed high while only the first treatment stage ran. Fan mussels, shellfish up to 120 cm long, live off Methana.
What does Perdika harbour add to an Aegina boat trip?
An Aegina boat trip reaches Perdika harbour, 9 km from the town of Aegina. The village name is the Greek word for partridge. It stands 20 m above the sea. Greece protects it as a representative fishing settlement.
Perdika was the seat of its own community from 1912 to 1917 and from 1933. It joined the municipality of Aegina in 1997. The 2011 census counted 680 residents.
From Cape Pyrgos, the southernmost tip, an Aegina boat trip heads north-west. It passes Klima, Louriotis and Sarpa bays. Kareoti and Profitis Ilias bays lie north of Perdika.
The Dormition church, marking the Virgin’s death, stands on the waterfront. Agios Sostis, on the cape, holds its feast on 7 September. It was destroyed in 1943 and rebuilt after the war.
- Sponges: Aegina’s sponge fleet lasted until the 1970s.
- Workforce: Fishermen were 40% of workers in 1971.
- Catch: Red mullet and pandora fish lead today’s catch.
Under Metaxas’s dictatorship, Greece planned a naval fort at Perdika. German troops landed at the fort in 1941. Back in the 1928 census, the village counted only 239 residents.
Which months suit an Aegina boat trip?
An Aegina boat trip meets its driest weather in high summer. Greece’s weather service, HNMS, keeps a station at Elliniko on the Saronic coast. It logs 1.7 rain days in July. January brings 12.9.
On an Aegina boat trip, the water warms strongly from late winter to early autumn. A year-long study there measured an average seasonal rise of 12.4 °C from March to September.
An Aegina boat trip crosses waters watched by POSEIDON, the Greek sea-monitoring system. Its Saronikos buoy was the network’s very first station. It floats over 209 m of water.
HNMS lists north as the prevailing wind in eleven months. Etesians, the summer north winds, are named after étos, Greek for year. They can keep yachts and ferries in port.
- Late June: The sun sets at 20:52 local time.
- Early December: Sunset comes at 17:07.
- Buoy spot: The Saronikos buoy floats at 37.611°N, 23.564°E.
HNMS logs the strongest mean winds in August, the lightest in late spring. During summer, the Saronic and Argolic gulfs draw more boats and yachts than anywhere else in Greece.
What do day sailors ask about an Aegina boat trip?
An Aegina boat trip has rescue cover from the Hellenic Coast Guard’s coordination centre in Piraeus. Its patrol boats measure from 6 m to 60 m. A vessel traffic service watches busy sea lanes near Lavrion and Rafina.
Who runs sea rescue during an Aegina boat trip?
Sea rescue around Aegina falls to the Hellenic Coast Guard. Its Joint Rescue Coordination Centre works together with the Hellenic Air Force and Navy. Searches run around the clock across the Greek Search and Rescue Region. Foreign rescue centres cooperate with it.
What is a nautical mile on an Aegina boat trip?
A nautical mile is a sea length unit outside the International System of Units. Early navigators counted 60 of these miles to one degree. A 1929 conference in Monaco fixed its length. It equals about 1.15078 statute, or land, miles.
Which other islands share the gulf with an Aegina boat trip?
A Greek list of Argo-Saronic islands counts 20 islands and islets. The Diaporia group includes Agios Thomas, Agios Ioannis, Tragonisi, Prasou, Ledou and Moladi. The Lagousses group includes Kordeliaris, Makronisos, Panagitsa, Gaidaros and Eleousa. Arsida and Kavouronisi also lie there.
Can a plane land on the island of an Aegina boat trip?
No. Lists of Greek airports name none on Aegina. The Attica region’s international airport, Eleftherios Venizelos, stands at Spata, near Athens. Its only island airport is Kithira Island National Airport. The former Ellinikon international airport in Athens closed in 2001.
Which chart covers the sea of an Aegina boat trip?
Greek-edition chart XEE-413 covers the whole Saronic Gulf, beside volume 2 of the Greek Pilot handbook. The Hellenic Navy Hydrographic Service issues Greece’s official nautical charts. It was founded in 1919. Its motto, Thalattan Gnonai, means to know the sea.
What is a caique on an Aegina boat trip?
A caique is a traditional fishing boat of the Ionian and Aegean seas. Its widest point sits far back, behind a long, sharp bow. Builders work largely from memory, not plans. Lately it also serves as a short excursion boat.