Santorini catamaran photos: our own boat, and the day in order
These Santorini catamaran photos are all our own boat, our own crew and our own guests: 18 frames running from the berth to the last of the light, taking in the trampolines, Red Beach, the volcano swim, lunch in the cockpit, Thirassia and Oia from below. The notes under them describe the same day hour by hour.
A gallery is meant to answer one question: what does the day actually look like? These are our frames, in the order the day happens, and the words underneath carry the parts a photograph cannot — the timings, the water temperature, and why the light behaves the way it does.
The day, in the order you see it
Where these came from, and what we deleted
The short version: we deleted an entire picture library on purpose, then rebuilt from the owner’s own files.
The library that came with the old site was a single photo shoot aboard a boat that is not ours. One frame in it shows another company’s name printed across the boom cover.
That frame condemns the shoot around it. The same crew, the same uniforms, the same wheel, the same placemats run through dozens of the images. None of them can be shown to be this business, and one of them is provably not. So the whole library came down, and it is not coming back.
What replaced it came out of the owner’s own files, and every frame above was opened at full size and looked at before it went up. Several were rejected for exactly the reason the old library was — that boom cover turns up in the owner’s photographs too, and a picture with another operator’s name in it is no more usable for being ours.
The same rule decided the captions. Where we have no honest photograph of a place, the page says what the picture actually shows instead of naming a beach it was not taken at. Three stops are still waiting for their own frame for that reason.
What you see, in the order you see it
A 10:00 semi-private day cruise in June. Times shift through the season, and the captain reorders the stops when the wind asks him to. Read it as a sequence, not a schedule. Every place named below has its own page under Santorini by boat.
The island turns into a wall
Ten minutes out, the land stops being a place you are standing on and becomes a face you are looking at. Dark rock at the waterline, pale ash above it, a thin white line of village along the top.
The red cliffs
The colour at Red Beach is iron. Haematite in the volcanic rock, oxidised, which is why the cliff holds its rust-red in any light. The shore under it is dark red-black pebble, not sand. We hold off it. The land path in runs straight beneath a cliff face that engineers have concluded cannot practically be stabilised.
The white pumice wall
Ten minutes west and the rock changes completely. White Beach sits under pumice and tephra thrown out by the Minoan eruption, published as rising more than 20 m above the shore, wind-cut into something close to lunar. The beach itself is dark pebble. People expect white sand and do not get it.
Mesa Pigadia, and a face in the rock
A cove of grey-black pebble under pale and dark cliffs, with small caves along the flanks. Somewhere on this shore, between Red Beach and the lighthouse, is the black lava profile people call Indian Rock, locally Indianos. It resolves from one angle only and it passes in about a minute.
The lighthouse at the corner
Every boat rounds the Akrotiri light. It is marketed everywhere as the Venetian lighthouse and it is nothing of the sort: a French build of 1892, dark through the Second World War, recommissioned in 1945, run by the Hellenic Navy ever since.
The caldera opens up
This is the one that never fits in a frame. The basin runs about 11 km across and roughly 390 m deep, ringed by cliff, with the black island of Nea Kameni in the middle of it. On the western rim, Aspronisi shows the whole story in section: dark lava at the base, thick pale pumice stacked on top. The black is before. The white is the eruption.
Ochre water
You swim from the boat into Agios Nikolaos bay at Palea Kameni. Iron oxide seeping up through the seabed turns the water rust-orange and opaque, and there is a sulphur smell with it. Published temperatures run around 30-35 °C, which is warmer than the sea and nowhere near a hot bath. It marks a pale swimsuit permanently.
Lunch on deck
The grill has been going while you swam. Chicken, shrimp, salad, pasta, and the wine comes out. Nobody plans this frame, and it is the one people are gladdest to still have a year later.
Thirassia
The piece of the rim that broke away: 9.3 km² of it, with 249 people living there at the 2021 census. From the water you get Korfos at the waterline, Manolas along the top, and a stone stairway zigzagging between the two.
Oia from below
The angle almost nobody photographs. From the sea the whole vertical section stacks into one frame: the coloured houses at Ammoudi, the stepped path, the cave houses cut sideways into the rock, the blue domes, the Kastro ruin at the point, the windmills on the ridge behind. From land you look along the rim. Only from the water do you look up at it.
Fira, and ashore
Past the Old Port, with the cable car cabins crossing above it and the stepped path closed since 28 July 2026. Then the boat comes in and the car takes you back.
The order changes when the wind changes. That call belongs to the captain and is made on the morning.
The moments worth photographing, and roughly when
Times are for a 10:00 day cruise. The third column is what people get wrong, told by the crew who watch them try.
| Moment | Roughly when | What usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| The red cliffs | 10:40 | We hold offshore. A phone at full zoom turns the rock to mush. Shoot it wide and put the rail in the frame for scale. |
| The white pumice wall | 11:20 | It reads as flat white in the middle of the day. Put a swimmer in front of it and it suddenly has a size. |
| Indian Rock | 11:50 | It only resolves from one angle and it is gone in a minute. Ask a crew member when to look, then look, then shoot. |
| The Akrotiri lighthouse | 12:20 | The caption, mostly. It is an 1892 French build run by the Hellenic Navy, not a Venetian one. |
| The caldera opening up | 12:35 | Nothing 11 km across fits in a still. Pan a video instead, slowly, and let the cliff run past. |
| The hot springs | 13:00 | You are in the water, so the camera is not. Hand your phone to somebody before you go in, and rinse everything afterwards. |
| Lunch on deck | 13:30 | Nothing technical. It is simply the shot everybody forgets to take. |
| Thirassia | 14:10 | Korfos, the stairway and Manolas only line up as one photograph from the sea. |
| Oia from below | 14:40 | Waterline to rim in a single frame, which no land viewpoint gives you. Salt on the lens is the usual spoiler. |
| Sunset | sunset cruise only | The day cruise is ashore before the light does anything. Sunset runs from about 20:40 in early July to 19:03 on 1 October. |
Times move with the season and with the wind, so treat the middle column as the shape of a day rather than a promise.
What works on board
Your phone is fine, and it is also at risk. There is spray under way and the deck is wet at every swim stop. Bring a zip bag or a dry pouch. We cannot keep anything dry for you.
Put a strap on it. Whatever goes over the side is gone. The water under the boat runs to hundreds of metres and there is no getting it back.
No drone. The caldera is a no-fly zone and launching from a deck is not a way round that. The detail sits on drones and photography on board.
Ask the crew. Hand somebody your phone at the hot springs or at lunch; they are used to it and they know which second matters. Whether a professional photographer can be arranged as an add-on is not something we publish, so ask us on WhatsApp and we will give you a straight answer.
Three stops have no photograph of their own yet — White Beach, Skaros Rock and the old port at Fira. They currently show the boat on the caldera, captioned as exactly that, and they are the next frames on the shotlist.
What will not go up is stock, a shoot from somebody else’s deck, or any image we cannot account for. An honest gap beats a borrowed picture, and this page grows only on those terms.
Come and take your own
Send the date and the number of guests. We reply the same day with what is free, and you can judge the boat from the deck of it.
Call the harbour office+30 698 977 1888
Common questions
Can I fly a drone from the boat?
No. The Santorini caldera is a no-fly zone, and the water inside it sits under the same controlled airspace, so launching from a deck is not a way round the rule. Flights from a vessel need prior authorisation from the Greek civil aviation authority, applied for weeks ahead. Assume no drone.
Do you help with photos?
The crew will take photos and video on your phone at the moment that matters, and they are used to being asked. Whether we can arrange a professional photographer or videographer as an add-on is not something we publish, so ask us on WhatsApp if you want that organised properly.
Is my phone safe on board?
Treat it as if it is not. There is spray under way, the deck is wet at every swim stop, and anything that goes over the side is gone for good, because the water under the boat runs to hundreds of metres. Bring a zip bag and a strap.
Where do the photographs on this website come from?
They are the owner’s own files — our boat, our crew, our food and our guests — chosen one frame at a time and checked before publishing. The library inherited from the old site was a single shoot aboard a boat that is not ours, and one frame carries another company’s branding across the boom cover. All of it was deleted rather than passed off as ours.
Santorini Boat Tour - Water Taxi is a catamaran cruise and water taxi operator based in Fira, Santorini.
Updated August 2026