Med Yachts FAQ

The best time to sail in Greece and Turkey is between late May and late Oct.

Earlier in the season is possible, but those glorious sunny-all-day Med conditions are not guaranteed; we can still get some dodgy weather early in May.  The Turkish season tends to extend a little later than Greece; it stays warm and calm longer, the “lights-off” time for most tourist businesses in Turkey is Oct 30.  In Greece, conditions can be a little unpredictable late in Oct (but it can still be a great time to sail, for those who hate crowds!)

Winds – the typical meltemi pattern of summer winds tends to follow the temperature.  It blows the strongest in mid-summer, and is calmer in early and late season.  In some parts of Greece (notably the Ionian), it’s a nice, predictable afternoon breeze; anywhere mid-Aegean or further east, forget any such reliability – the meltemi will blow when it feels like it!

 

For Greece,  most nationalities do not need a visa.  One notable exception is South Africa, where you must apply in advance. If you at all in doubt, pls check with your local Greek embassy.  Most non-EU residents get an automatic 3 month visa-on-entry.

Turkey – most nationalities do need a visa, but it is a very simple online process.  The cost varies according which nationality you are, usually from around 15 euros to sometimes up to 50 euros.  The most common is around 20 euros.

Please note, your passport must be valid for 6 months AFTER your overseas travel is completed.

One of our reasons for choosing the Dodecanese as our home base is that we get Turkey as our next door neighbour.  So we get to sail in both countries,  a wonderful variety!

However, just because we are so geographically close does not mean that we can simply zig-zag between countries (if only!). One still has to go through customs procedures, and this can only be done at certain Ports of Entry.  Still, it’s a whole lot easier to take our own floating home between countries, rather than messing around with bags, queues and customs officials, as you would on a ferry.

However, it still takes our skippers time to deal with paperwork, hence our usual suggestion of 10 days or so as an ideal timeframe.  (Two weeks is even nicer, if you have the vacation time !).

Most of our “combo” trips start and end in Greece, cruising the Turkish coastline in the middle of the itinerary.

Our trips are meant as vacations, not sail-training 🙂 – so we do our best to balance out about half a day on the water, half a day with time to explore ashore.

In the Med, the distances tend to be shorter; 3-4 hrs sailing time would be an average. We generally get up and out early in the morning, giving us plenty of time to sail – then time ashore later in the day. When it gets busy, it’s a great policy to be “out first, in first” – to get the best spots on the dock!

In SE Asia, the distances are sometimes longer – there will be some days when we might sail 5-6 hours to get to somewhere particularly spectacular. Most of our boats here are wide, spacious catamarans, with plenty of shaded space to spread out – so the extra time on the water isn’t exactly hard to take :).

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