BOAT-COMPARATOR Guide

Boat Rental in Amorgos: The Wildest Cyclades Island, on the Trail of The Big Blue

No airport, two tiny ports, a monastery clinging to a cliff: Amorgos remains the hardest Cyclades island to reach. How to rent a boat there and visit the filming locations of The Big Blue.

At the southeastern tip of the archipelago, long and narrow like a fishbone laid across the Aegean, Amorgos has nothing of the crowded white-and-blue Cyclades you picture from Santorini or Mykonos. No airport, a single road winding from one end of the island to the other, and a monastery suspended 300 metres above the waves: it was this rugged relief that drew Luc Besson here in 1988 to shoot part of The Big Blue. Thirty-eight years on, the island remains one of the least visited of the Cyclades — and one of the most rewarding to discover by sea.

Two ports, two moods

Amorgos revolves around two ports, a good hour's drive apart and never served by the same ferry company on every rotation. Katapola, on the south-central coast, is the main port: well sheltered, with tavernas, grocery shops and a water point, about 5 km below Chora, the clifftop capital wrapped around its Venetian kastro. Aegiali, in the north, some fifteen kilometres from Chora by road, is quieter and more exposed to north-easterly winds, but has a sandy beach right at the foot of the village — a rarity on such a mineral island. Choosing your port already means choosing the mood of your stay.

On the trail of The Big Blue

Luc Besson's film fixed the island's image for generations of viewers. The monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa, founded in 1088 by the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, literally clings to the cliff above the sea: it is one of the oldest still-inhabited monasteries in Greece, and one of the most photographed sites in the Cyclades. At its foot, the cove of Agia Anna — a few metres of pebbles and electric-blue water — became the film's postcard image. Further south, in the isolated bay of Kalotaritissa, lies the wreck that fans of the film come looking for by boat: it is where Enzo dives at the start of The Big Blue to save a shipwrecked man. All three sites are far easier to visit by sea than by the island's single winding road, which has no direct access to most of the coves in the south.

Renting a boat locally: a small but real offer

Amorgos has never had the fleet depth of Paros or Naxos: tourism arrived here later and stayed more low-key. SamBoat nonetheless lists offers out of Katapola, mostly RIBs and small day boats, enough to reach Agia Anna and Kalotaritissa without relying on the group caïque excursions that leave the harbour at the same times as everyone else. For a liveaboard sailboat or catamaran, the more common solution is to charter from a better-stocked base — Naxos or Santorini — and add Amorgos as a stop on a wider itinerary rather than as a starting port. Boat-Comparator checks Boataround, SamBoat and Click&Boat across all these bases in a single search.

The meltemi hits harder here

As the southeasternmost island of the archipelago, Amorgos takes the meltemi head-on once it picks up, with gusts that accelerate noticeably through the narrow channels between islands — a pattern well documented in Greek meteorology, which has shown that these northerly outbursts can persist for several days running under the right pressure setup between the Balkans and Turkey (Prezerakos N.G., Etesian winds outbursts over the Greek Seas and their linkage with larger-scale atmospheric circulation features, Atmósfera, 2022, see the study on Google Scholar). In July-August, it pays to schedule crossings in the morning and keep a sheltered plan B — the same reflex already recommended across the whole of the Cyclades.

Extending to the Small Cyclades

Between Naxos and Amorgos lies the low-key archipelago of the Small Cyclades — Koufonisia, Iraklia, Schinoussa, Donoussa — reachable in one to two hours' sailing from Katapola in calm weather. It is the natural extension of a stay in Amorgos for anyone renting with a skipper or aboard a liveaboard boat: deserted beaches, sheltered anchorages and almost no tourist infrastructure. By contrast, the crossing remains too exposed for most license-free rental contracts, which stay confined to coastal waters around the island itself.

Getting there

Amorgos has no airport: you fly into Naxos, Santorini or Athens, then take a ferry. From Piraeus, count on roughly 6 hours on a fast connection and up to 8 hours on a conventional ferry; from Naxos, the crossing is much shorter and runs several times a day in high season to Katapola. This relative remoteness largely explains why the island has kept a character that many other Cyclades have lost.

Compare offers

For a stop in Amorgos as for the rest of the archipelago, Boat-Comparator compares Boataround, SamBoat and Click&Boat offers in one search, to help you choose the boat and the base — Katapola, Aegiali or a better-stocked neighbouring island — that truly fit your itinerary.

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